Massachusetts lake · state assessment record
Hawkes Pond
Assessment decisions reported by Massachusetts to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2020 reporting cycle.
- 65
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Hawkes Pond, a lake in Massachusetts, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2020). 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).
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P61
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
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.
Where Hawkes Pond stands in 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 Massachusetts, cause-list rank 453 of 678 is mid-pack, the state peer table is not driven by an extreme list length here.
Every ruled-on use is not supporting
On the uses this filer ruled on, recreation, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Hawkes Pond: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Hawkes Pond. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Hawkes Pond is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Mid-pack inside Massachusetts
Size rank 256 of 678 inside Massachusetts is mid-pack; the national percentile is the better scale comparison for this unit.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Massachusetts carries 1,191 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Hawkes Pond 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. For the definitive verdicts on this record, Massachusetts filed the assessment basis as Monitored Data. Those are EPA's own words, not PlainLakes' summary of them. Massachusetts filed its own confidence on the 3 definitive verdicts it rated: Low. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aesthetic | Other | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Low |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Low |
| Secondary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Low |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Assessed |
| Fish, Other Aquatic Life and Wildlife | Aquatic-life or related | 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 lake, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turbidity | Aesthetic, Primary Contact Recreation, Secondary Contact Recreation | 2002 | TMDL priority: Low |
Probable sources
Massachusetts listed the source of the impairment as unknown. That is the state's own filed value, not a gap in this record: the cause has been identified, the origin has not.
Reading the record
Where Hawkes Pond sits among peers
75% of Massachusetts's lakes assessed this deeply also had no use supported
Massachusetts ruled definitively on 3 designated uses at Hawkes Pond and found none of them supported. The dataset shows 121 Massachusetts lakes judged to that same depth.
Massachusetts's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use; this one was judged on 3.
Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All supported | 15 | 14 | 11 | 0 | 0 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 5 | 19 | 31 | 12 |
| None supported | 283 | 60 | 91 (this record) | 128 | 49 |
Ringed cell: Hawkes Pond. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Hawkes Pond is one of 1,191 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Massachusetts, and one of 678 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 65 assessed acres it ranks 15,223rd 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 15,222 lakes with a larger one.
Awaiting a filing
The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict and a definitive aquatic-life verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.
In context
Where Hawkes Pond 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
65 Top 39% larger than 61% 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 Hawkes Pond. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Massachusetts context
ATTAINS carries 1,191 lake-type waterbodies in Massachusetts, 678 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 40 fully supporting. Among the 678 indexed units there, Hawkes Pond ranks 453rd by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 256th by assessed size among the 678 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (678 statewide) . Its listed causes (Turbidity) sit outside Massachusetts's top-five list, which is led by Mercury in Fish Tissue.
| Other large assessed lakes in Massachusetts | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Quabbin Reservoir Not Supporting | 24,010 |
| Wachusett Reservoir Not Supporting | 3,962 |
| Assawompset Pond Not Assessed | 2,034 |
| North Watuppa Pond Not Supporting | 1,728 |
| Long Pond Not Supporting | 1,728 |
| South Watuppa Pond Not Supporting | 1,473 |
Peers near Hawkes Pond's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (65 acres here).
- Barron Flowage No. 3 · 65 acres · WI
- Big Sioux Recreation Area (Lake Calliope) · 65 acres · IA
- Bunch Reservoir · 65 acres · AZ
- Butterfly Lake · 65 acres · MO
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Aaron · 1 causes · MN
- Abbotts Creek (including Lexington-Thomasville Water Supply Reservoir at normal reservoir elevation, Tom-A-Lex Lake) · 1 causes · NC
- Abeniki Lake · 1 causes · NH
- Academy Brook II Dam · 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 MA93032. 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.