Arkansas reservoir · state assessment record
Pickthorne Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Arkansas to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 207
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Pickthorne Lake, a reservoir in Arkansas, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as fully supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P82
- Assessed size nationally
- P10
- 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.
Where Pickthorne Lake stands in 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: in-state cause rank
Inside Arkansas, cause-list rank is the local separator: Pickthorne Lake is 7 of 69 indexed units by listed-cause count, toward the top of that state's filed lists.
Pickthorne Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Pickthorne Lake. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Every ruled-on use is fully supporting
The filed use determinations for fish consumption, recreation, 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.
Large assessed unit
At 207 acres, Pickthorne Lake clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (6,998 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
Longer than most cause lists
2 listed causes puts this unit above 80% 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.
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 Pickthorne 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 state's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle.
| Designated use | 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 | Not Supporting |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
| Secondary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this reservoir, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turbidity - Base Flows | Other Uses | 2002 | TMDL priority: Low |
| Turbidity - Storm Flows | Other Uses | 2002 | TMDL priority: Low |
Reading the record
Where Pickthorne Lake sits among peers
26% of Arkansas's lakes assessed this deeply also came out mixed
Arkansas ruled definitively on 8 designated uses at Pickthorne Lake and found 1 of 8 not supported. The dataset shows 68 Arkansas lakes judged to that same depth.
Arkansas's assessed lakes are most often judged on 5 or more uses, as this one was.
Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All supported | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 50 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 25 | 0 | 0 | 18 (this record) |
| None supported | 18 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: Pickthorne Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Pickthorne 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 207 assessed acres it ranks 6,999th 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 6,998 lakes with a larger one.
In context
Where Pickthorne 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
207 Top 18% larger than 82% 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
2 Longer than most more listed causes than 80% 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 Pickthorne 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, Pickthorne Lake ranks 7th by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 38th by assessed size among the 69 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (62 statewide) . Its listed causes include Turbidity - Storm Flows, which also appears among Arkansas's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury in Fish Tissue). It also lists Turbidity - Base Flows, outside that top-five list.
| Other large assessed lakes in Arkansas | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Dardanelle Lake Fully Supporting | 34,041 |
| Millwood Lake Fully Supporting | 29,500 |
| Ouachita Lake Fully Supporting | 24,695 |
| Bull Shoals Not Supporting | 22,046 |
| Greers Ferry Lake Fully Supporting | 18,151 |
| Felsenthal Lake Not Supporting | 14,000 |
Peers near Pickthorne Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (207 acres here).
- Gillespie New · 207 acres · IL
- Granite Reservoir · 207 acres · MA
- Long Pond · 207 acres · MA
- Clamshell · 207 acres · MN
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (2 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 12th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 31st St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 49th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 57th St. Beach · 2 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
- 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_08020402_4010. 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.