Minnesota lake · tribal assessment record
Joe Martin 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.
- 69
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
- Oligotrophic
- Reported trophic class
This waterbody in one line
Joe Martin Lake, a lake in Minnesota, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes 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 among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) rules aquatic life fully supporting, and aquatic life: subsistence fishing (netting) not supported.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P62
- Assessed size nationally
- P10
- Shorter cause list
- Not Supporting
- aquatic-life or related
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.
How Joe Martin Lake 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: in-state cause rank
Inside Minnesota, cause-list rank is the local separator: Joe Martin Lake is 345 of 1,939 indexed units by listed-cause count, toward the top of that state's filed lists.
A split ruling across uses
This record splits: Not Supporting on aquatic life, Fully Supporting on recreation. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.
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 Joe Martin Lake is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Small within Minnesota
State size rank 1651 of 1,930 puts Joe Martin Lake toward the small end of Minnesota's indexed lake-type units with an area.
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 Joe Martin 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: Cold Water Fisheries | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Aquatic Life: Subsistence Fishing (Netting) | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting |
| Aquatic Life: Warm Water Fisheries | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Cultural: Aesthetic Waters | Cultural use | Fully Supporting |
| Recreation: Primary Contact Recreational | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
| Recreation: Secondary Contact Recreational | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
| Wildlife | Other | Fully Supporting |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | Aquatic Life: Subsistence Fishing (Netting) Also assessed as meeting: Wildlife | 2016 | TMDL priority: High |
| Mercury in Fish Tissue | Aquatic Life: Subsistence Fishing (Netting) | 2016 | TMDL priority: High |
Reading the record
Cleanup queue for Joe Martin Lake
2 listed causes ranked High in the TMDL queue, still without a plan
The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band) ranked 2 listed causes high in its TMDL development queue, and no cleanup plan is on file for those listings yet. That queue rank is the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'s own scheduling signal, not an EPA national rule.
A High ranking names a position in the state's plan-writing queue; it is not a measure of how impaired the water is. How listing and cleanup work.
Scale and rank
Joe Martin 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 69 assessed acres it ranks 14,778th 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 14,777 lakes with a larger one.
Awaiting a filing
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
Oligotrophic 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 Joe Martin 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
69 Top 38% larger than 62% 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 Joe Martin 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, Joe Martin Lake ranks 345th by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 1,651st by assessed size among the 1,930 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (1,798 statewide) . Its listed causes include Mercury in Fish Tissue, which also appears among Minnesota's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury in Fish Tissue). It also lists Mercury, outside that top-five list.
| 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 Joe Martin Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (69 acres here).
- <Null> · 69 acres · OR
- Henneman Lake · 69 acres · WI
- Raccoon Ck (below Swedesboro rd)/BirchCk · 69 acres · NJ
- Holbrook Pond (Hebron) · 69 acres · CT
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 Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (Fond du Lac Band)'s reported decisions for assessment unit FDL_111. 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.