California reservoir · state assessment record

Lake Sherwood

Assessment decisions reported by California to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle. The cleanup plan below was established by EPA rather than by California.

137
Assessed acres
Lake / Reservoir / Pond
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Lake Sherwood, a reservoir in California, 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 in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting. California assesses commercial and sport fishing as not supported; it reported no verdict on fish consumption itself.

Not Supporting
overall status
P76
Assessed size nationally
P20
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.

B-
Water Quality Standing
69/100
Lake Sherwood

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 LifeA+
Meeting criteria
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionF
Not supporting
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

Where Lake Sherwood 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: assessed size

The number that most separates Lake Sherwood nationally is assessed size: 136.9 acres, larger than 76% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.

Mixed use determinations

This record splits: Not Supporting on fish consumption, Fully Supporting on aquatic life. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.

Lake Sherwood: Category 4A reading

Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Lake Sherwood. The remaining work is implementation and tracking, read the cleanup-standing and cause rows for what the state already committed to address.

Overall status: not supporting

The filer's overall status for Lake Sherwood is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.

Typical cause-list length

1 listed cause is a middle-tercile list length among assessed lake-type units. Look to IR category and use outcomes for the distinctive reading.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, California carries 607 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Lake Sherwood without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

EPA-established cleanup plan. EPA, not California, established the cleanup plan on this record. ATTAINS records the agency responsible for each determination and records EPA's for these; it does not record why. The Clean Water Act provides for EPA to establish a load itself where a state does not submit one, or where EPA disapproves the one it submits.
Reporting cycle
2022
California Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 4A
Uses with verdicts
3
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
Commercial and Sport Fishing Fish-consumption or fishery Not Supporting
Warm Freshwater Habitat Aquatic-life or related Fully Supporting
Wildlife Habitat Other 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
Mercury Commercial and Sport Fishing; Wildlife Habitat Also assessed as meeting: Warm Freshwater Habitat 2024 TMDL established by EPA

Probable sources

California 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

Lake Sherwood: Category 4A reading

4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed

California 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.

How listing and cleanup work.

Scale and rank

Lake Sherwood is one of 607 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from California, and one of 195 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 137 assessed acres it ranks 9,470th 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 9,469 lakes with a larger one.

Not yet on record

The state has not yet filed a definitive recreation verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.

In context

Where Lake Sherwood 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

137 Top 24% larger than 76% 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 Lake Sherwood. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

California context

ATTAINS carries 607 lake-type waterbodies in California, 202 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 22 fully supporting. Among the 195 indexed units there, Lake Sherwood ranks 141st by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 120th by assessed size among the 195 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (202 statewide) . Its listed causes include Mercury, which also appears among California's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury).

Other large assessed lakes in California Assessed acres
Salton Sea Not Supporting 233,045
Tahoe, Lake Not Supporting 84,092
Goose Lake (Modoc County) Not reported 62,385
Honey Lake Not Supporting 55,526
Klamath River HU, Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge Not Supporting 48,791
Mono Lake Not Supporting 45,299

Peers near Lake Sherwood's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (137 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

  • The listing here is on a fishery use, not on fish consumption, and this state reported no consumption verdict for this reservoir. Your state fish-advisory program is the source for whether the catch is safe to eat. 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 CAL4042600019990201154540. 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.