Arkansas reservoir · state assessment record
Lake Frierson
Assessment decisions reported by Arkansas to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2018 reporting cycle. Both cleanup plans below were established by EPA rather than by Arkansas.
- 335
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Lake Frierson, a reservoir in Arkansas, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2018). By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P87
- Assessed size nationally
- P10
- 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 Frierson'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 Arkansas, cause-list rank is the local separator: Lake Frierson is 6 of 69 indexed units by listed-cause count, toward the top of that state's filed lists.
Lake Frierson: Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Lake Frierson. The remaining work is implementation and tracking, read the cleanup-standing and cause rows for what the state already committed to address.
Large assessed unit
At 335 acres, Lake Frierson clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (4,937 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
All ruled-on uses pass
The filed use determinations for aquatic life are all Fully Supporting. Where an overall IR category still flags the unit, look at the cause list and report standing rather than treating the use row as empty.
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.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Arkansas carries 144 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Lake Frierson 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Other Uses | Other | Not Supporting |
| Agricultural Water Supply | Other | Not Assessed |
| Domestic Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Assessed |
| Industrial Water Supply | Other | Not Assessed |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Assessed |
| Secondary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Assessed |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turbidity - Base Flows | Other Uses | 2004 | TMDL established by EPA |
| Turbidity - Storm Flows | Other Uses | 2004 | TMDL established by EPA |
Reading the record
Lake Frierson: Category 4A reading
4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed
Arkansas filed this assessment unit as Category 4A: impaired, with a pollutant-budget TMDL already completed under 303(d). The listing remains an impairment finding; the plan is on file rather than still awaiting write-up.
Scale and rank
Lake Frierson is one of 144 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Arkansas, and one of 69 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 335 assessed acres it ranks 4,938th 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 4,937 lakes with a larger one.
Still unfiled
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
Lake Frierson 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 Lake Frierson 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
335 Top 13% larger than 87% 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 Lake Frierson. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Arkansas context
ATTAINS carries 144 lake-type waterbodies in Arkansas, 62 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 55 fully supporting. Among the 69 indexed units there, Lake Frierson ranks 6th by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 34th by assessed size among the 69 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (62 statewide) . Its listed causes include Turbidity - Storm Flows, which also appears among Arkansas's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury in Fish Tissue). It also lists Turbidity - Base Flows, outside that top-five list.
| Other large assessed lakes in Arkansas | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Dardanelle Lake Fully Supporting | 34,041 |
| Millwood Lake Fully Supporting | 29,500 |
| Ouachita Lake Fully Supporting | 24,695 |
| Bull Shoals Not Supporting | 22,046 |
| Greers Ferry Lake Fully Supporting | 18,151 |
| Felsenthal Lake Not Supporting | 14,000 |
Peers near Lake Frierson's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (335 acres here).
- Clinton Lake · 335 acres · OK
- Silver · 335 acres · MN
- Johnson · 335 acres · MN
- Harstad Slough · 335 acres · MN
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 AR_08020302_4020. 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.