Washington reservoir · state assessment record

Horseshoe Lake (9.80 acres)

Assessment decisions reported by Washington to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.

9.80
Assessed acres
Lake / Reservoir / Pond
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Horseshoe Lake, a reservoir in Washington, 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 among the smaller assessed lakes nationally (38,628 lakes with a filed area); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting.

Not Supporting
overall status
P19
Assessed size nationally
P20
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.

C-
Water Quality Standing
50/100
Horseshoe Lake

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 BurdenA+
1 cause
Filed pollutant/stressor causes, vs. the national corpus of assessed active units
Assessment CurrencyB+
2022
Reporting cycle this record’s verdicts were last decided in

Reading Horseshoe Lake's filed record

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 Washington, this unit sits toward the short-list end: cause-list rank 366 of 385 indexed units.

Every filed use falls short

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.

Horseshoe Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed

Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Horseshoe Lake. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.

Small within Washington

State size rank 364 of 385 puts Horseshoe Lake toward the small end of Washington's indexed lake-type units with an area.

Small assessed unit

9.8 acres puts Horseshoe Lake in the lower tercile by assessed area. Small units are often beaches, ponds, or segments, read the water-type and co-filed notes before comparing them to a multi-thousand-acre reservoir.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Washington carries 832 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Horseshoe Lake without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2022
Washington Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 5
Uses with verdicts
1
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
Aquatic Life - General Aquatic-life or related Not Supporting

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
Phosphorus, Total Aquatic Life - General 2012 TMDL priority: Low

Reading the record

Where Horseshoe Lake sits among peers

272 of 272 Washington lakes assessed this deeply also had no use supported (every lake judged to this depth, so the outcome does not set this record apart)

Washington ruled definitively on a single designated use at Horseshoe Lake and found it not supported. The dataset shows 272 Washington lakes judged to that same depth.

Washington's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use, as this one was.

Assessed lakes in Washington by how many uses were ruled on and how those rulings came out
Less More
Assessed lakes in Washington by how many uses were ruled on and how those rulings came out (lakes)
12345+
All supported 00000
Mixed Not possible0000
None supported 272 (this record)892282

Ringed cell: Horseshoe Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.

Scale and rank

Horseshoe Lake is one of 832 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Washington, and one of 385 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 9.80 assessed acres it ranks 31,520th 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 31,519 lakes with a larger one.

Not yet on record

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.

Why no water-level record

Horseshoe 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 Horseshoe 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

10 Top 81% larger than 19% 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 Horseshoe Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

Washington context

ATTAINS carries 832 lake-type waterbodies in Washington, 393 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 0 fully supporting. Among the 385 indexed units there, Horseshoe Lake ranks 366th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 364th by assessed size among the 385 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (393 statewide) . Its listed causes include Phosphorus, Total, which also appears among Washington's most-filed impairment causes (led by Non-Native Aquatic Plants).

Other large assessed lakes in Washington Assessed acres
Bumping Lake Not Assessed 1,354
Sullivan Lake Not Supporting 1,298
Deer Lake Not Supporting 1,146
Loon Lake Not Supporting 1,094
American Lake Not Supporting 1,092
Newman Lake Not Supporting 1,091

Peers near Horseshoe Lake's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (9.80 acres here).

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (1 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 WA17110013000407_001_001. 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.