New Jersey multi-water assessment unit · state assessment record
Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd)
Assessment decisions reported by New Jersey to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.
- 51
- Acres of lake water
- Lake
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd), a multi-water assessment unit in New Jersey, 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 above the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). New Jersey assesses shellfish harvesting as not supported; it reported no verdict on fish consumption itself.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P55
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
- Not Supporting
- fish-consumption or fishery
The state agency files this as one assessment unit spanning 51.41 acres of lake water and 35.06 miles of stream and river. The verdicts and listed causes below are reported for the whole unit, not for the lake water alone. 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 Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd)'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: in-state cause rank
Inside New Jersey, this unit sits toward the short-list end: cause-list rank 523 of 588 indexed units.
Every ruled-on use is not supporting
On the uses this filer ruled on, fish consumption, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd): Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd). 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 Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd) is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Mid-pack inside New Jersey
Size rank 180 of 588 inside New Jersey is mid-pack; the national percentile is the better scale comparison for this unit.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, New Jersey carries 611 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd) 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Shellfish Harvesting | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Supporting |
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Insufficient Information |
| Aquatic Life - Trout | Aquatic-life or related | Not Assessed |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Insufficient Information |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
| Public Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Assessed |
| Secondary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Assessed |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this multi-water assessment unit, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fecal Coliform | Shellfish Harvesting | 2014 | TMDL approved |
Reading the record
What this co-filed unit covers
35.06 miles of stream and river co-filed on this unit
The state agency files this as one assessment unit spanning 51.41 acres of lake water and 35.06 miles of stream and river. The verdicts and listed causes below are reported for the whole unit, not for the lake water alone.
This page is about the lake water in the unit; counts and verdicts below cover the whole multi-water assessment unit. How multi-water units are filed.
Scale and rank
Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd) is one of 611 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from New Jersey, and one of 588 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 51 assessed acres it ranks 17,289th 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 17,288 lakes with a larger one.
Awaiting a filing
The state has not yet filed a definitive recreation verdict and a definitive aquatic-life verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.
In context
Where Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd) 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
51 Top 45% larger than 55% 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 Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd). Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
New Jersey context
ATTAINS carries 611 lake-type waterbodies in New Jersey, 583 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 21 fully supporting. Among the 588 indexed units there, Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd) ranks 523rd by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 180th by assessed size among the 588 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (583 statewide) . Its listed causes (Fecal Coliform) sit outside New Jersey's top-five list, which is led by Arsenic.
| Other large assessed lakes in New Jersey | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Wanaque Reservior (below Monks gage) Not Supporting | 2,599 |
| Lake Hopatcong Not Supporting | 2,583 |
| Prescott Brook / Round Valley Reservior Not Supporting | 2,297 |
| Merrill Creek Not Supporting | 1,298 |
| Wallkill R / Lake Mohawk(above Sparta Sta) Not Supporting | 975 |
| Wanaque R/Greenwood Lk(aboveMonks gage) Not Supporting | 881 |
Peers near Patcong Creek (Somers Ave to Zion Rd)'s size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (51 acres here).
- Sand Lake · 51 acres · WI
- Little Lake Mary · 51 acres · FL
- Coe · 51 acres · MN
- LaFave Lake · 51 acres · WI
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Aaron · 1 causes · MN
- Aaron River Reservoir · 1 causes · MA
- Abbotts Creek (including Lexington-Thomasville Water Supply Reservoir at normal reservoir elevation, Tom-A-Lex Lake) · 1 causes · NC
- Abeniki Lake · 1 causes · NH
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 multi-water assessment unit. 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 NJ02040302060030-01. 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.