Montana lake · state assessment record
Priest Butte Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Montana to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2004 reporting cycle.
- 447
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Priest Butte Lake, a lake in Montana, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 4 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2004). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 10% by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (4 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P90
- Assessed size nationally
- P3
- Shorter cause list
- Not 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 Priest Butte 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 cause-list length: 4 listed impairment causes, a longer list than 95% of assessed lake-type units (n=23,610). List length tracks how states sample and code, not a severity score.
No ruled-on use clears the bar
On the uses this filer ruled on, aquatic life, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Large assessed unit
At 446.5 acres, Priest Butte Lake clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (4,017 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
Priest Butte Lake: Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Priest Butte Lake. 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 Priest Butte Lake is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Montana carries 73 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Priest Butte 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. For the definitive verdicts on this record, Montana filed the assessment basis as Monitored & Extrapolated Data. Those are EPA's own words, not PlainLakes' summary of them; where a verdict is filed as extrapolated, the state did not reach it from monitoring alone.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural | Other | Not Supporting |
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting |
| Drinking Water | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Supporting |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Assessed |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this lake, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salinity | Agricultural, Aquatic Life, Drinking Water | 1988 | TMDL approved |
| Selenium | Aquatic Life, Drinking Water | 1988 | TMDL approved |
| Sulfate | Agricultural, Aquatic Life, Drinking Water | 1988 | TMDL approved |
| Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) | Agricultural, Aquatic Life, Drinking Water | 1988 | TMDL approved |
Probable sources named by the state
Each source below is listed under the cause the state filed it against, and carries the word the state filed with it — confirmed, or suspected.
- Salinity
- Impacts From Hydrostructure Flow Regulation/Modification (suspected) Crop Production (Irrigated) (confirmed) Agriculture (confirmed)
- Selenium
- Impacts From Hydrostructure Flow Regulation/Modification (suspected) Crop Production (Irrigated) (confirmed) Agriculture (confirmed)
- Sulfate
- Impacts From Hydrostructure Flow Regulation/Modification (suspected) Crop Production (Irrigated) (confirmed) Agriculture (confirmed)
- Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
- Crop Production (Irrigated) (confirmed) Agriculture (confirmed)
Reading the record
Priest Butte Lake: Category 4A reading
4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed
Montana filed this assessment unit as Category 4A: impaired, with a pollutant-budget TMDL already completed under 303(d). The listing remains an impairment finding; the plan is on file rather than still awaiting write-up.
Scale and rank
Priest Butte Lake is one of 73 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Montana, and one of 52 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 447 assessed acres it ranks 4,018th 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 4,017 lakes with a larger one.
Open in the register
The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict and a definitive recreation verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.
Reported trophic class
Montana carried the trophic field for this assessment unit and filed it as unclassified, which records that no class was determined rather than that the water is unenriched. What the trophic scale measures.
In context
Where Priest Butte 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
447 Top 10% larger than 90% 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
4 Longer than most more listed causes than 95% 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 Priest Butte Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Montana context
ATTAINS carries 73 lake-type waterbodies in Montana, 28 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 28 fully supporting. Among the 52 indexed units there, Priest Butte Lake ranks 10th by listed-cause count (4 listed causes) and 39th by assessed size among the 52 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (28 statewide) . Its listed causes include Salinity and Selenium, which also appear among Montana's most-filed impairment causes (led by Flow Regime Modification). It also lists Sulfate and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), outside that top-five list.
| Other large assessed lakes in Montana | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Fort Peck Reservoir Not Supporting | 233,296 |
| Flathead Lake Not Supporting | 57,305 |
| Canyon Ferry Reservoir Not Supporting | 32,810 |
| Lake Koocanusa Not Supporting | 28,875 |
| Hungry Horse Reservoir Fully Supporting | 23,596 |
| Lake Elwell (Tiber Reservoir) Fully Supporting | 15,041 |
Peers near Priest Butte Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (447 acres here).
- Little Saint Germain Lake · 446 acres · WI
- Catherine Lake · 446 acres · AR
- Silver Lake · 446 acres · WA
- Pine · 447 acres · MN
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (4 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Agency Lake · 4 causes · OR
- Alachua Sink · 4 causes · FL
- Aldrich Pond · 4 causes · MA
- American Falls Reservoir (Snake River) · 4 causes · ID
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 MT41O004_020. 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.