Virginia reservoir · state assessment record
Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek (268 acres)
Assessment decisions reported by Virginia to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2026 reporting cycle, a cycle that is open for public comment.
- 268
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek, a reservoir in Virginia, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 3 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2026), a cycle that is open for public comment. By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile 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 fully supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as not supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P85
- Assessed size nationally
- P5
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- aquatic life
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.
Reading Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek'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 Virginia, cause-list rank is the local separator: Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek is 17 of 193 indexed units by listed-cause count, toward the top of that state's filed lists.
The uses disagree
This record splits: Not Supporting on fish consumption, recreation, Fully Supporting on aquatic life. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.
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.
Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Large assessed unit
At 267.9 acres, Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (5,794 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Virginia carries 275 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek 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. Virginia filed its own confidence on the 4 definitive verdicts it rated: Good. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Wildlife | Other | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCBs in Fish Tissue | Fish Consumption | 2006 | TMDL priority: Low |
| Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) | Fish Consumption | 2010 | TMDL priority: Low |
| Harmful Algal Blooms | Recreation | 2022 | TMDL priority: High |
Probable sources
Virginia 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
Cleanup queue for Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek
1 listed cause ranked High in the TMDL queue, still without a plan
Virginia ranked Harmful Algal Blooms high in its TMDL development queue, and no cleanup plan is on file for that listing yet. That queue rank is the state'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
Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek is one of 275 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Virginia, and one of 193 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 268 assessed acres it ranks 5,795th 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 5,794 lakes with a larger one.
Reported trophic class
Virginia carried the trophic field for this assessment unit and filed it as unclassified, which records that no class was determined rather than that the water is unenriched. What the trophic scale measures.
In context
Where Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek 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
268 Top 15% larger than 85% 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 Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Virginia context
ATTAINS carries 275 lake-type waterbodies in Virginia, 181 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 50 fully supporting. Among the 193 indexed units there, Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek ranks 17th by listed-cause count (3 listed causes) and 75th by assessed size among the 193 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (181 statewide) . Its listed causes include PCBs in Fish Tissue, which also appears among Virginia's most-filed impairment causes (led by PCBs in Fish Tissue). It also lists Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) and Harmful Algal Blooms, outside that top-five list.
| Other large assessed lakes in Virginia | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05M22 Not Supporting | 14,828 |
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05L98 Not Supporting | 7,018 |
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05N22 Not Supporting | 4,182 |
| Lake Drummond Not Supporting | 3,242 |
| Lake Chesdin Not Supporting | 3,164 |
| Lake Gaston Not Supporting | 3,072 |
Peers near Lake Anna/Pamunkey Creek's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (268 acres here).
- Little Rat · 268 acres · MN
- Arlington Mill Reservoir · 268 acres · NH
- Ladysmith Flowage · 268 acres · WI
- Crystal Lake · 268 acres · IA
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (3 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 67th St. Beach · 3 causes · IL
- Abiquiu Reservoir · 3 causes · NM
- Absecon Creek (AC Reserviors) (gage to SB) · 3 causes · NJ
- Absecon Creek (below gage) · 3 causes · NJ
What to do with this record
- The fish-consumption use is assessed as not supporting. Before eating fish from this reservoir, check your state fish-advisory program for species-specific meal limits. 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 VAN-F07L_PMC01B22. 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.