New Mexico reservoir · state assessment record
Nichols Reservoir
The assessment record reported by New Mexico to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), filed in the 2016 reporting cycle.
- 26
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
- 437.4 acre-ft
- Reservoir Storage (provisional)
This waterbody in one line
Nichols Reservoir, a reservoir in New Mexico, was reported but not assessed in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2016). By assessed acreage it sits below the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes). A USGS gauge tracks its reservoir storage daily.
- Not Assessed
- overall status
- P39
- Assessed size nationally
Assessment verdicts are the state agency's decisions as reported to EPA ATTAINS; PlainLakes renders them without modification.
How Nichols Reservoir 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
Assessed size is not the extreme here: 26.3 acres sits near the middle of the 38,628 units with an area filed (percentile 39).
IR category 3 on Nichols Reservoir
The Integrated Report category filed for Nichols Reservoir is 3. PlainLakes renders EPA's code without remapping it into a consumer grade.
Overall status: Not Assessed
ATTAINS overall status on this unit is “Not Assessed”. PlainLakes does not rewrite that vocabulary into a consumer score.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, New Mexico carries 176 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Nichols Reservoir 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Assessed |
| High Quality Coldwater Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Not Assessed |
| Irrigation | Other | Not Assessed |
| Livestock Watering | Other | Not Assessed |
| Primary Contact | Recreation | Not Assessed |
| Public Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Assessed |
| Wildlife Habitat | Aquatic-life or related | Not Assessed |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state reported this reservoir in its 2016 Integrated Report cycle but reached no assessment determination, so no causes are listed. The unit is recorded under EPA integrated-reporting Category 3: reviewed, with insufficient information to determine whether it meets water-quality standards. An undetermined waterbody is neither confirmed clean nor confirmed impaired.
Reading the record
What Nichols Reservoir's record holds
Scale and rank
Nichols Reservoir is one of 176 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from New Mexico. It is not among the 58 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 26 assessed acres it ranks 23,603rd 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 23,602 lakes with a larger one.
Reservoir storage
A USGS gauge tracks this reservoir's storage daily, and the latest reading is 35.70 acre-ft less than the reading 30 days earlier, against a 365-day range of 648.6 acre-ft. The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict, a definitive recreation verdict, a definitive aquatic-life verdict, and 1 other for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.
Reservoir storage: 365-day record
Daily reservoir storage values from USGS gauge 08316500 (Nichols Reservoir Near Santa Fe N Mex), shown weekly. Readings are daily-batch snapshots, not real-time conditions. Each daily value is a single reading taken at 24:00, not a daily mean. It is the only daily statistic USGS files for this gauge.
- Latest reading
- 437.4 acre-ft 35.700000000000045acre-ft vs 30 days earlier
- 2026-08-15 · Provisional, subject to USGS revision
Reservoir storage: 365-day record
Subscribe to reservoir storage updates for Nichols Reservoir (RSS)
222 of the 365 daily values in this window (61%) are provisional and subject to USGS revision; USGS has approved this gauge's record through 2026-01-05.
Of the 365 daily values in this record, 63 were estimated by USGS rather than measured. USGS marks these individually; approval and estimation are separate judgements and a value can carry both.
Full gauge record: USGS monitoring location 08316500
In context
Where Nichols Reservoir 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
26 Top 61% larger than 39% 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
In both charts each bar is a band and taller bars hold more waterbodies; the dashed line and filled bar mark Nichols Reservoir. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
New Mexico context
ATTAINS carries 176 lake-type waterbodies in New Mexico, 46 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 28 fully supporting.
| Other large assessed lakes in New Mexico | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Navajo Reservoir Not Supporting | 12,680 |
| Elephant Butte Reservoir Not Supporting | 10,909 |
| South Lordsburg Playa Not Assessed | 7,412 |
| Ute Reservoir Not Supporting | 5,988 |
| Heron Reservoir Not Supporting | 4,497 |
| Laguna del Pero Fully Supporting | 4,477 |
Lakes near Nichols Reservoir's assessed acres
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (26 acres here).
- Shields · 26 acres · MN
- Print Works Pond · 26 acres · RI
- Foss · 26 acres · MN
- Keenan · 26 acres · MN
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
- Storage is a volume in acre-feet, not a water level, and it moves with seasonal drawdown and release schedules as well as inflow. How to read gauge 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 NM-2118.B_40. 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.