South Dakota reservoir · state assessment record
Lake Kampeska
Codington County. Assessment decisions reported by South Dakota to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 5,067
- Assessed acres
- Lake / Reservoir / Pond
- Water type
- Mesotrophic
- Reported trophic class
- 17.9 ft
- Gage Height (provisional)
This waterbody in one line
Lake Kampeska, a reservoir in South Dakota, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 1% of assessed lakes nationally (38,628 lakes with a filed area); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting. A USGS gauge tracks its gage height daily.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P99
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- 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.
Where Lake Kampeska stands in 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: cause-list length
The standout filed fact is a short cause list: 0 causes, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. A short list can mean a focused impairment, or a shallow assessment.
Large assessed unit
At 5,067 acres, Lake Kampeska clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (608 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 recreation, 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.
Large within South Dakota
Among South Dakota's 176 indexed units with an area, Lake Kampeska ranks 10 by assessed size, toward the large end of that state file.
IR category in the supporting band
EPA's Integrated Report category for Lake Kampeska is 1. In ATTAINS that band means the assessed uses are supporting (or supporting with other waters in the unit), so the narrative weight shifts to how deep the assessment went and whether monitoring is current, not to a restoration plan.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, South Dakota carries 195 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Lake Kampeska 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. South Dakota filed 2023 as the year this waterbody was last monitored. South Dakota filed its own confidence on the 5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic Water Supply Waters | Drinking-water supply designation | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Fish and Wildlife Propagation, Recreation, and Stock Watering Waters | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Immersion Recreation Waters | Recreation | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Limited Contact Recreation Waters | Recreation | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Warmwater Permanent Fish Life Propagation Waters | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this reservoir.
Reading the record
Lake Kampeska: Category 1 reading
1 Category 1: all designated uses supported
South Dakota filed this assessment unit as Category 1: every designated use assessed here was reported as supported. That is the filer's Integrated Report classification, not a PlainLakes score.
Scale and rank
Lake Kampeska is one of 195 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from South Dakota, and one of 176 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 5,067 assessed acres it ranks 609th 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 608 lakes with a larger one.
Water level
A USGS gauge tracks this reservoir's gage height daily, and the latest reading is 0.48 ft below the reading 30 days earlier, against a 365-day observed range of 1.8 ft. The state 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
Mesotrophic 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.
Water level: 365-day record
Daily gage height values, feet above this gauge’s own local zero, not above sea level, from USGS gauge 06479449 (Lake Kampeska at Water Plant at Watertown, Sd), shown weekly. Readings are daily-batch snapshots, not real-time conditions.
- Latest reading
- 17.9 ft 0.4800000000000004ft vs 30 days earlier
- 2026-08-15 · Provisional, subject to USGS revision
Water level: 365-day record
Subscribe to water level updates for Lake Kampeska (RSS)
257 of the 342 daily values in this window (75%) are provisional and subject to USGS revision; USGS has approved this gauge's record through 2025-11-18.
Full gauge record: USGS monitoring location 06479449
In context
Where Lake Kampeska 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
5,067 Top 1% larger than 99% 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
0 Among the shortest cause lists fewer listed causes than 51% 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 Kampeska. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
South Dakota context
ATTAINS carries 195 lake-type waterbodies in South Dakota, 145 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 41 fully supporting. Among the 176 indexed units there, Lake Kampeska ranks 148th by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 10th by assessed size among the 176 with an area filed; it is one of the 41 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .
| Other large assessed lakes in South Dakota | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Lake Thompson Not Supporting | 13,888 |
| Lake Poinsett Not Supporting | 9,795 |
| Waubay Lake Not Supporting | 9,531 |
| Bitter Lake Not Supporting | 7,865 |
| Dry Lake Number 2 Not Supporting | 6,442 |
| Orman Dam (Belle Fourche Reservoir) Not Supporting | 6,106 |
Peers near Lake Kampeska's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (5,067 acres here).
- Lewisville Lake · 5,081 acres · TX
- Candlewood, Lake (New Fairfield/Danbury/Sherman/New Milford) · 5,086 acres · CT
- Coffey Co. Lake (Wolf Creek Lake) · 5,090 acres · KS
- Somerville Lake · 5,095 acres · TX
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 31st Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 42nd Avenue East Beach · 0 causes · MN
- 59th Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 657 Dunleavy (Beach) · 0 causes · MI
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
- Water levels shown are daily snapshots. Seasonal drawdown and datum conventions matter when comparing levels. How to read level data
- 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 SD-BS-L-KAMPESKA_01. 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.