Alabama reservoir · state assessment record
Pickwick Lake (7,364 acres)
Assessment decisions reported by Alabama Department of Environmental Management to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.
- 7,364
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Pickwick Lake, a reservoir in Alabama, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the state'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. Alabama assesses fishing as supported; it reported no verdict on fish consumption itself.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P99
- 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.
How Pickwick 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: cause-list length
The standout filed fact is a short cause list: 0 causes, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. A short list can mean a focused impairment, or a shallow assessment.
Large assessed unit
At 7,364 acres, Pickwick Lake clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (435 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
Every filed use clears the bar
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 within Alabama
Among Alabama's 263 indexed units with an area, Pickwick Lake ranks 14 by assessed size, toward the large end of that state file.
IR category in the supporting band
EPA's Integrated Report category for Pickwick Lake is 1. 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.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Alabama carries 304 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Pickwick 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Contact Recreation | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
| Drinking and Food Processing | Drinking-water supply designation | Fully Supporting |
| Fishing | Fish-consumption or fishery | Fully Supporting |
| Industrial and Agriculture Uses | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Propagation of Fish and Wildlife | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this reservoir.
Reading the record
Pickwick Lake: Category 1 reading
1 Category 1: all designated uses supported
Alabama filed this assessment unit as Category 1: every designated use assessed here was reported as supported. That is the filer's Integrated Report classification, not a PlainLakes score.
Scale and rank
Pickwick Lake is one of 304 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Alabama, and one of 263 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 7,364 assessed acres it ranks 436th 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 435 lakes with a larger one.
What this record holds
Alabama 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.
In context
Where Pickwick 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
7,364 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 Pickwick Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Alabama context
ATTAINS carries 304 lake-type waterbodies in Alabama, 143 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 130 fully supporting. Among the 263 indexed units there, Pickwick Lake ranks 150th by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 14th by assessed size among the 263 with an area filed; it is one of the 130 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .
| Other large assessed lakes in Alabama | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Tennessee River (Lake Guntersville) Fully Supporting | 20,440 |
| Wheeler Lake Not Supporting | 18,705 |
| Tallapoosa River (Lake Martin) Fully Supporting | 15,867 |
| Coosa River (Weiss Lake) Not Supporting | 15,066 |
| Tennessee River (Wheeler Lake) Not Supporting | 13,441 |
| Tennessee River (Wilson Lake) Not Supporting | 13,363 |
Peers near Pickwick Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (7,364 acres here).
- Trout · 7,369 acres · MN
- Lake Tawakoni · 7,344 acres · TX
- Saco River-Lovewell Pond · 7,340 acres · ME
- Belton Lake · 7,393 acres · TX
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 AL06030005-1203-101. 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.