Minnesota lake · tribal assessment record
Hardwood Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Minnesota (Fond du Lac Band) to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 97
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Wild Rice
- Water type
- Mesotrophic
- Reported trophic class
This waterbody in one line
Hardwood Lake, a lake in Minnesota, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'s most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits above the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P69
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- aquatic life
Assessment verdicts are the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'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.
Hardwood Lake against the ATTAINS 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: cause-list length
The standout filed fact is a short cause list: 0 causes, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. A short list can mean a focused impairment, or a shallow assessment.
All ruled-on uses pass
The filed use determinations for recreation, aquatic life are all Fully Supporting. Where an overall IR category still flags the unit, look at the cause list and report standing rather than treating the use row as empty.
Overall status: fully supporting
Overall status is Fully Supporting. If an IR category or cause row still appears, it usually reflects a prior listing path or a use the overall rollup does not collapse, read those sections rather than stopping at the tile.
Small within Minnesota
State size rank 1535 of 1,930 puts Hardwood Lake toward the small end of Minnesota's indexed lake-type units with an area.
Large assessed unit
At 97.3 acres, Hardwood Lake clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (11,914 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Minnesota carries 13,176 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Hardwood Lake 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 Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'s definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle. The latest monitoring the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) filed against this record runs through 2024. For the definitive verdicts on this record, the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) filed the assessment basis as Monitored Data. Those are EPA's own words, not PlainLakes' summary of them.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life: Warm Water Fisheries | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Cultural: Wild Rice Areas | Cultural use | Fully Supporting |
| Recreation: Primary Contact Recreational | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
| Wildlife | Other | Fully Supporting |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'s reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.
Reading the record
Where Hardwood Lake sits among peers
1 of 18 Minnesota lakes assessed this deeply were also judged fully supported
The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) ruled definitively on 4 designated uses at Hardwood Lake and found every one of them supported. The dataset shows 18 Minnesota lakes judged to that same depth.
Minnesota's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use; this one was judged on 4.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All supported | 1.4k | 169 | 7 | 1 (this record) | 16 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 526 | 341 | 17 | 10 |
| None supported | 682 | 159 | 62 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: Hardwood Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Hardwood Lake is one of 13,176 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Minnesota, and one of 1,939 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 97 assessed acres it ranks 11,915th 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 11,914 lakes with a larger one.
What this record holds
The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) completed an assessment here and listed no impairment cause, so the record holds a verdict and its supporting use rows but no pollutant to track over time. The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) 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
Mesotrophic is the trophic class the filing agency reported to EPA ATTAINS for this assessment unit. It describes nutrient enrichment, not whether the water is safe, and it is not a PlainLakes inference. What the trophic scale measures.
In context
Where Hardwood Lake 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
97 Top 31% larger than 69% 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
0 Among the shortest cause lists fewer listed causes than 51% 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 Hardwood Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Minnesota context
ATTAINS carries 13,176 lake-type waterbodies in Minnesota, 1,798 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 1,566 fully supporting. Among the 1,939 indexed units there, Hardwood Lake ranks 1,915th by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 1,535th by assessed size among the 1,930 with an area filed; it is one of the 1,566 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .
| Other large assessed lakes in Minnesota | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Superior Not Supporting | 13,182,720 |
| Lake of the Woods Not Supporting | 301,348 |
| Red (Lower Red) Not reported | 164,699 |
| Lower Red Lake Fully Supporting | 164,689 |
| Mille Lacs Not Supporting | 128,076 |
| Red (Upper Red) Not Supporting | 119,279 |
Peers near Hardwood Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (97 acres here).
- Middle Lake Hamilton · 97 acres · FL
- Beaverdam Lake · 97 acres · WI
- Vandercook Lake · 97 acres · WI
- Bird Lake · 97 acres · WI
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 31st Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 59th Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 657 Dunleavy (Beach) · 0 causes · MI
- <Null> · 0 causes · OR
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 Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'s reported decisions for assessment unit FDL_107. 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.