Florida lake · state assessment record
Lake Trafford
Assessment decisions reported by Florida to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 1,517
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
- 18.2 ft
- Water Surface Elevation (provisional)
This waterbody in one line
Lake Trafford, a lake in Florida, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 4 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 5% by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (4 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as fully supporting. A USGS gauge tracks its water surface elevation daily.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P96
- Assessed size nationally
- P3
- Shorter cause list
- Not 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.
How Lake Trafford 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: assessed size
The number that most separates Lake Trafford nationally is assessed size: 1,517 acres, larger than 96% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.
Longer than most cause lists
4 listed causes puts this unit above 95% 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.
The uses disagree
This record splits: Not Supporting on recreation, aquatic life, Fully Supporting on fish consumption. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.
Lake Trafford: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Lake Trafford. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Lake Trafford is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Florida carries 1,475 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Lake Trafford 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Fully Supporting |
| Fish and Wildlife Propagation - Freshwater | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting |
| Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chlorophyll-a | Fish and Wildlife Propagation - Freshwater; Recreation | 2020 | TMDL approved |
| Nitrogen, Total | Fish and Wildlife Propagation - Freshwater; Recreation | 2020 | TMDL approved |
| Phosphorus, Total | Fish and Wildlife Propagation - Freshwater; Recreation | 2020 | TMDL approved |
| Turbidity | Fish and Wildlife Propagation - Freshwater; Recreation | 2024 | TMDL priority: High |
Reading the record
Cleanup queue for Lake Trafford
1 listed cause ranked High in the TMDL queue, still without a plan
Florida ranked Turbidity 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 Trafford is one of 1,475 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Florida, and one of 973 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 1,517 assessed acres it ranks 1,684th 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 1,683 lakes with a larger one.
Water level
A USGS gauge tracks this lake's water surface elevation daily, and the latest reading is 0.38 ft below the reading 30 days earlier, against a 365-day observed range of 2.4 ft.
Water level: 365-day record
Daily water surface elevation values, feet above the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29), from USGS gauge 02291200 (Lake Trafford Nr Immokalee, Fla.), shown weekly. Readings are daily-batch snapshots, not real-time conditions.
- Latest reading
- 18.2 ft 0.379999999999999ft vs 30 days earlier
- 2026-08-15 · Provisional, subject to USGS revision
Water level: 365-day record
Subscribe to water level updates for Lake Trafford (RSS)
163 of the 365 daily values in this window (45%) are provisional and subject to USGS revision; USGS has approved this gauge's record through 2026-03-05.
Full gauge record: USGS monitoring location 02291200
In context
Where Lake Trafford 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
1,517 Top 4% larger than 96% 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
4 Longer than most more listed causes than 95% 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 Trafford. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Florida context
ATTAINS carries 1,475 lake-type waterbodies in Florida, 636 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 367 fully supporting. Among the 973 indexed units there, Lake Trafford ranks 48th by listed-cause count (4 listed causes) and 94th by assessed size among the 973 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (636 statewide) . Its listed causes include Chlorophyll-a; Nitrogen, Total; and Phosphorus, Total, which also appear among Florida's most-filed impairment causes (led by Phosphorus, Total). It also lists Turbidity, outside that top-five list.
| Other large assessed lakes in Florida | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Lake Okeechobee Not Supporting | 76,101 |
| Lake George Not Supporting | 43,576 |
| Lake Apopka Not Supporting | 30,909 |
| Lake Kissimmee Not Supporting | 30,671 |
| Lake Istokpoga Not Supporting | 26,673 |
| Lake Tohopekaliga Fully Supporting | 19,006 |
Peers near Lake Trafford's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (1,517 acres here).
- Lake Mary Ronan · 1,517 acres · MT
- J.c. Murphy Lake · 1,515 acres · IN
- Whitney Lake · 1,515 acres · TX
- Rice · 1,515 acres · MN
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (4 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Agency Lake · 4 causes · OR
- Aldrich Pond · 4 causes · MA
- American Falls Reservoir (Snake River) · 4 causes · ID
- Anderson & Carlton · 4 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
- 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 FL3259W. 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.