California lake · state assessment record
Honey Lake
Assessment decisions reported by California to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2020 reporting cycle.
- 55,526
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Saline
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Honey Lake, a lake in California, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2020). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 1% of assessed lakes nationally (38,628 lakes with a filed area); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes).
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P100
- Assessed size nationally
- P10
- 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 Honey Lake 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: assessed size
The number that most separates Honey Lake nationally is assessed size: 55,526 acres, larger than 100% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.
Every filed use falls short
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.
Honey Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Honey Lake. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Longer than most cause lists
2 listed causes puts this unit above 80% of assessed lake-type records by list length. Treat that as a coding-and-sampling signal: states that split pollutants finely mint longer lists without proving worse water.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Honey Lake is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, California carries 607 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Honey 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 state's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural Supply | Other | Not Supporting |
| Water Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arsenic | Water Contact Recreation | 2018 | None reported |
| Salinity/Total Dissolved Solids/Chlorides | Agricultural Supply | 2018 | None reported |
Probable sources
California 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 Honey Lake sits among peers
91% of California's lakes assessed this deeply also had no use supported (the standard result at this depth, not a distinction)
California ruled definitively on 2 designated uses at Honey Lake and found none of them supported. The dataset shows 118 California lakes judged to that same depth.
California's assessed lakes are most often judged on 2 uses, as this one was.
Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All supported | 11 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 3 | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| None supported | 46 | 107 (this record) | 11 | 7 | 2 |
Ringed cell: Honey Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Honey Lake is one of 607 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from California, and one of 195 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 55,526 assessed acres it ranks 54th 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 53 lakes with a larger one.
Still unfiled
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.
Why no water-level record
Honey Lake has no daily USGS water-level or reservoir-storage series on this page because NWIS lists a lake monitoring site named for the waterbody, but the site is not active, and PlainLakes ingests only the active inventory, so there is no series to attach. How PlainLakes links gauges.
In context
Where Honey 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
55,526 Top 1% larger than 99%+ 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
2 Longer than most more listed causes than 80% 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 Honey Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
California context
ATTAINS carries 607 lake-type waterbodies in California, 202 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 22 fully supporting. Among the 195 indexed units there, Honey Lake ranks 35th by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 3rd by assessed size among the 195 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (202 statewide) . Its listed causes (Arsenic; and Salinity/Total Dissolved Solids/Chlorides) sit outside California's top-five list, which is led by Mercury.
| Other large assessed lakes in California | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Salton Sea Not Supporting | 233,045 |
| Tahoe, Lake Not Supporting | 84,092 |
| Goose Lake (Modoc County) Not reported | 62,385 |
| Klamath River HU, Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge Not Supporting | 48,791 |
| Mono Lake Not Supporting | 45,299 |
| Clear Lake Not Supporting | 39,582 |
Peers near Honey Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (55,526 acres here).
- Harry S Truman Reservoir · 55,600 acres · MO
- Columbia River · 55,630 acres · OR
- Hartwell Lake · 55,950 acres · GA
- Lake Champlain, Main Lake, Middle · 54,972 acres · NY
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (2 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 12th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 31st St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 49th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 57th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
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 CAL6371006019980805165100. 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.