California lake · state assessment record

Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds

Assessment decisions reported by California to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2020 reporting cycle.

776
Assessed acres
Lake, Saline
Water type
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This waterbody in one line

Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds, a lake in California, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 3 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2020). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 10% by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (3 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting.

Not Supporting
overall status
P93
Assessed size nationally
P5
Shorter cause list
Not Supporting
aquatic life

Assessment verdicts are the state agency's decisions as reported to EPA ATTAINS; PlainLakes renders them without modification.

F
Water Quality Standing
14/100
Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds

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.

RecreationN/A
Not assessed
Swimming, boating, and other primary/secondary contact recreation
Drinking WaterN/A
Not assessed
Suitability as a public drinking-water source
Aquatic LifeF
Not supporting
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionN/A
Not assessed
Safety of eating fish caught in this water
Impairment BurdenF
3 causes
Filed pollutant/stressor causes, vs. the national corpus of assessed active units
Assessment CurrencyF
2020
Reporting cycle this record’s verdicts were last decided in

How Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds 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: assessed size

The number that most separates Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds nationally is assessed size: 776.3 acres, larger than 93% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.

Every ruled-on use is not supporting

On the uses this filer ruled on, aquatic life, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.

Longer than most cause lists

3 listed causes puts this unit above 90% 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.

Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds: Category 5, TMDL still owed

Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds. 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 Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds 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 Wildfowl Management Ponds without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2020
California Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 5
Uses with verdicts
2
Definitive use assessments
Sources retrieved
2026-08-17
Portal-wide ATTAINS + NWIS pull

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
Cold Freshwater Habitat Aquatic-life or related Not Supporting
Warm Freshwater Habitat Aquatic-life or related Not Supporting
Commercial and Sport Fishing Fish-consumption or fishery Insufficient Information
Wildlife Habitat Other Insufficient Information

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
Metals Cold Freshwater Habitat 2018 None reported
Other Warm Freshwater Habitat 2018 None reported
Salinity/Total Dissolved Solids/Chlorides Warm Freshwater Habitat 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 Wildfowl Management Ponds 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 Wildfowl Management Ponds 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.

91 N

Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.

Share of California lakes judged on 2 designated uses with the same outcome
Assessed lakes in California by how many uses were ruled on and how those rulings came out
Less More
Assessed lakes in California by how many uses were ruled on and how those rulings came out (lakes)
12345+
All supported 118003
Mixed Not possible31088
None supported 46107 (this record)1172

Ringed cell: Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.

Scale and rank

Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds 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 776 assessed acres it ranks 2,712th 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 2,711 lakes with a larger one.

Awaiting a filing

The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict and a definitive recreation verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.

In context

Where Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds 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

776 Top 7% larger than 93% 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

3 Longer than most more listed causes than 90% 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 Wildfowl Management Ponds. 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 Wildfowl Management Ponds ranks 28th by listed-cause count (3 listed causes) and 75th by assessed size among the 195 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (202 statewide) . Its listed causes (Metals; Other; 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
Honey Lake Not Supporting 55,526
Klamath River HU, Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge Not Supporting 48,791
Mono Lake Not Supporting 45,299

Peers near Honey Lake Wildfowl Management Ponds's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (776 acres here).

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (3 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.

How peers are picked

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 CAL6372009519980806091131. 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.