Arkansas lake · state assessment record
Ouachita Lake (24,695 acres)
Assessment decisions reported by Arkansas to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2020 reporting cycle.
- 24,695
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Ouachita Lake, a lake in Arkansas, is assessed as fully supporting its assessment entries, with no impairment causes listed in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2020). 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. Fish consumption is assessed as fully supporting.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P100
- 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.
Reading Ouachita Lake's filed record
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 Ouachita Lake nationally is assessed size: 24,695 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.
Every filed use clears the bar
The filed use determinations for fish consumption, 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.
IR category in the supporting band
EPA's Integrated Report category for Ouachita Lake is 2. 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.
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, Arkansas carries 144 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Ouachita Lake without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.
The record
Assessment entries
Fully Supporting and Not Supporting are the state's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle.
| Assessment entry | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural Water Supply | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Domestic Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Fully Supporting |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Fully Supporting |
| Industrial Water Supply | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Other Uses | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Outstanding Resource Waters | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
| Secondary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
Not every entry above is a designated use: Outstanding Resource Waters is an antidegradation protection class, not a designated use. The state files it in the ATTAINS use column, so it carries whatever verdict the state recorded against it.
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.
Reading the record
Ouachita Lake: Category 2 reading
2 Category 2: some uses supported, others not assessed
Arkansas filed this assessment unit as Category 2: some designated uses are supported and others were not assessed in this cycle. Absence of a failing verdict is not the same as a full Category 1 finding.
Scale and rank
Ouachita Lake is one of 144 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Arkansas, and one of 69 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 24,695 assessed acres it ranks 127th 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 126 lakes with a larger one.
What this record holds
Arkansas completed an assessment here and listed no impairment cause, so the record holds a verdict and its supporting use rows but no pollutant to track over time. 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 Ouachita 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
24,695 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 Ouachita Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Arkansas context
ATTAINS carries 144 lake-type waterbodies in Arkansas, 62 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 55 fully supporting. Among the 69 indexed units there, Ouachita Lake ranks 64th by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 2nd by assessed size among the 69 with an area filed; it is one of the 55 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .
| Other large assessed lakes in Arkansas | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Dardanelle Lake Fully Supporting | 34,041 |
| Millwood Lake Fully Supporting | 29,500 |
| Bull Shoals Not Supporting | 22,046 |
| Greers Ferry Lake Fully Supporting | 18,151 |
| Felsenthal Lake Not Supporting | 14,000 |
| Norfork Lake Not Supporting | 13,833 |
Peers near Ouachita Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (24,695 acres here).
- Great Sacandaga Lake · 24,722 acres · NY
- Carlyle · 24,580 acres · IL
- Lake C. W. McConaughy · 24,868 acres · NE
- Almanor Lake · 24,897 acres · CA
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
- 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 AR_08040101_4062. 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.