Virginia reservoir · state assessment record
Goose Creek Reservoir (58 acres)
Assessment decisions reported by Virginia to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.
- 58
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Goose Creek Reservoir, a reservoir in Virginia, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2022). By assessed acreage it sits above the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P58
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- aquatic life
Assessment verdicts are the state agency's decisions as reported to EPA ATTAINS; PlainLakes renders them without modification.
A composite of this record's EPA ATTAINS designated-use verdicts, filed impairment count, and assessment currency, weighted and benchmarked against the national corpus of assessed active waterbodies. This is a water-quality standing, not a human-recreation or property-value judgment, and dimensions with no filed verdict drop out rather than count against the score.
How Goose Creek Reservoir reads against the filed register
Paragraphs are selected by this unit's percentiles and use matrix: different lakes lead with different dimensions. Figures are ATTAINS / portal register arithmetic, not advice.
The signature stat: in-state cause rank
Inside Virginia, this unit sits toward the short-list end: cause-list rank 155 of 193 indexed units.
The uses disagree
This record splits: Not Supporting on recreation, Fully Supporting on aquatic life. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.
Goose Creek Reservoir: Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Goose Creek Reservoir. The remaining work is implementation and tracking, read the cleanup-standing and cause rows for what the state already committed to address.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Goose Creek Reservoir is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Small within Virginia
State size rank 150 of 193 puts Goose Creek Reservoir toward the small end of Virginia's indexed lake-type units with an area.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Virginia carries 275 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Goose Creek Reservoir without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.
The record
Designated-use assessments
Fully Supporting and Not Supporting are the state's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle. Virginia filed its own confidence on the 3 definitive verdicts it rated: Good. That rating is the filer's, in EPA's own field, and EPA publishes no definition of the four words it offers.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Wildlife | Other | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Assessed |
| Public Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Assessed |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this reservoir, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Escherichia coli (E. coli) | Recreation | 2018 | TMDL approved |
Probable sources named by the state
Each source below is listed under the cause the state filed it against, and carries the word the state filed with it — confirmed, or suspected.
- Escherichia coli (E. coli)
- Grazing in Riparian or Shoreline Zones (confirmed) Livestock (Grazing or Feeding Operations) (confirmed) Sewage Discharges in Unsewered Areas (confirmed)
Reading the record
Goose Creek Reservoir: Category 4A reading
4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed
Virginia filed this assessment unit as Category 4A: impaired, with a pollutant-budget TMDL already completed under 303(d). The listing remains an impairment finding; the plan is on file rather than still awaiting write-up.
Scale and rank
Goose Creek Reservoir is one of 275 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Virginia, and one of 193 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 58 assessed acres it ranks 16,189th by assessed size among the 38,628 lakes the dataset carries an area for, counting a state’s repeated filings of one water once, behind 16,188 lakes with a larger one.
Open in the register
The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.
Reported trophic class
Virginia carried the trophic field for this assessment unit and filed it as unclassified, which records that no class was determined rather than that the water is unenriched. What the trophic scale measures.
In context
Where Goose Creek Reservoir sits nationally
Assessed size among U.S. lakes
Distribution of assessed acreage across ATTAINS lakes filed with an area, counting a state’s repeated filings of one water once
58 Top 42% larger than 58% of 38,628 lakes
lakes the dataset carries an area for, counting a state’s repeated filings of one water once, bucketed by value
Source EPA ATTAINS · Reporting cycles 1987–2026
Listed causes vs waterbodies carrying a verdict
How many impairment causes U.S. waterbodies with a reported verdict carry
1 Longer than most more listed causes than 49% of 23,610 waterbodies carrying a verdict
named waterbodies carrying a verdict, bucketed by value
Source EPA ATTAINS · Reporting cycles 1987–2026
In both charts each bar is a band and taller bars hold more waterbodies; the dashed line and filled bar mark Goose Creek Reservoir. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Virginia context
ATTAINS carries 275 lake-type waterbodies in Virginia, 181 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 50 fully supporting. Among the 193 indexed units there, Goose Creek Reservoir ranks 155th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 150th by assessed size among the 193 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (181 statewide) . Its listed causes include Escherichia coli (E. coli), which also appears among Virginia's most-filed impairment causes (led by PCBs in Fish Tissue).
| Other large assessed lakes in Virginia | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05M22 Not Supporting | 14,828 |
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05L98 Not Supporting | 7,018 |
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05N22 Not Supporting | 4,182 |
| Lake Drummond Not Supporting | 3,242 |
| Lake Chesdin Not Supporting | 3,164 |
| Lake Gaston Not Supporting | 3,072 |
Peers near Goose Creek Reservoir's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (58 acres here).
- Quiet Lakes · 58 acres · ID
- Glen · 58 acres · MN
- Bear · 58 acres · MN
- Phernetton Lake · 58 acres · WI
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Aaron · 1 causes · MN
- Aaron River Reservoir · 1 causes · MA
- Abbotts Creek (including Lexington-Thomasville Water Supply Reservoir at normal reservoir elevation, Tom-A-Lex Lake) · 1 causes · NC
- Abeniki Lake · 1 causes · NH
What to do with this record
- Assessment verdicts are cycle-based, not real-time. For fish-consumption decisions, your state advisory program is the binding source. Consumption status guide
- Impairment listings follow the Clean Water Act 303(d) process; a listing is a regulatory finding, not a closure notice. 303(d) explained
PlainLakes renders state assessment decisions and federal gauge observations without modification. It does not issue advisories.
Assessment decisions on this page are rendered directly from state Integrated Report records in EPA's ATTAINS system; gauge figures are daily-value observations from the USGS National Water Information System, no number is typed in by an editor. Overall status, use verdicts, and causes are the state's reported decisions for assessment unit VAN-A08L_GOO02B06. Counts and percentiles are computed across all lake-type records PlainLakes ingests from ATTAINS. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-08-17. Primary sources: EPA ATTAINS and USGS National Water Information System.