Minnesota lake · tribal assessment record
Lower Red Lake
Part of the Upper/Lower Red Lake Watershed in Beltrami County on the Red Lake Reservation. Assessment decisions reported by Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Minnesota to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.
- 164,689
- Assessed acres
- Lake
- Water type
- 73.7 ft
- Gage Height (provisional)
This waterbody in one line
Lower Red Lake, a lake in Minnesota, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2022). 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
- P100
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- aquatic life
Assessment verdicts are the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians'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 Lower Red Lake 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 Lower Red Lake nationally is assessed size: 164,689 acres, larger than 100% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.
Shorter than most cause lists
Only 0 causes on file, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. Pair the short list with the use matrix: a single Not Supporting use can still be the whole story.
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.
Overall status: fully supporting
Overall status is Fully Supporting. If an IR category or cause row still appears, it usually reflects a prior listing path or a use the overall rollup does not collapse, read those sections rather than stopping at the tile.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Minnesota carries 13,176 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Lower Red Lake 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 Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Cultural | Cultural use | Fully Supporting |
| General | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Warm Water Fisheries | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Primary Contact | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
| Secondary Contact | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.
Reading the record
Where Lower Red Lake sits among peers
2% of Minnesota's lakes assessed this deeply were also judged fully supported
The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians ruled definitively on 3 designated uses at Lower Red Lake and found every one of them supported. The dataset shows 410 Minnesota lakes judged to that same depth.
Minnesota's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use; this one was judged on 3.
Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All supported | 1.4k | 169 | 7 (this record) | 1 | 16 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 526 | 341 | 17 | 10 |
| None supported | 682 | 159 | 62 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: Lower Red Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Lower Red Lake is one of 13,176 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Minnesota, and one of 1,939 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 164,689 assessed acres it ranks 16th 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 15 lakes with a larger one.
Water level
A USGS gauge tracks this lake's gage height daily, and the latest reading is 0.16 ft below the reading 30 days earlier, against a 365-day observed range of 1.0 ft. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians 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.
Water level: 365-day record
Daily gage height values, feet above this gauge’s own local zero, not above sea level, from USGS gauge 05074000 (Lower Red Lake Nr Red Lake, Mn), shown weekly. Readings are daily-batch snapshots, not real-time conditions.
- Latest reading
- 73.7 ft 0.1599999999999966ft vs 30 days earlier
- 2026-08-16 · Provisional, subject to USGS revision
Water level: 365-day record
Subscribe to water level updates for Lower Red Lake (RSS)
83 of the 363 daily values in this window (23%) are provisional and subject to USGS revision; USGS has approved this gauge's record through 2026-05-25.
Full gauge record: USGS monitoring location 05074000
In context
Where Lower Red Lake 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
164,689 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 Lower Red Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Minnesota context
ATTAINS carries 13,176 lake-type waterbodies in Minnesota, 1,798 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 1,566 fully supporting. Among the 1,939 indexed units there, Lower Red Lake ranks 1,771st by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 4th by assessed size among the 1,930 with an area filed; it is one of the 1,566 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .
| Other large assessed lakes in Minnesota | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Superior Not Supporting | 13,182,720 |
| Lake of the Woods Not Supporting | 301,348 |
| Red (Lower Red) Not reported | 164,699 |
| Mille Lacs Not Supporting | 128,076 |
| Red (Upper Red) Not Supporting | 119,279 |
| Upper Red Lake Fully Supporting | 118,943 |
Peers near Lower Red Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (164,689 acres here).
- Toledo Bend Reservoir-From Texas-Louisiana state line to Toledo Bend Dam · 165,487 acres · LA
- Lake Michigan (Not Indexed) (Salmonid) (Osrw) · 154,176 acres · IN
- Lake Powell · 149,885 acres · UT
- Lake Mead · 147,392 acres · NV
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 31st Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 59th Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 657 Dunleavy (Beach) · 0 causes · MI
- <Null> · 0 causes · OR
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 Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's reported decisions for assessment unit RLN_LOWER_RED_LAKE. 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.