Washington reservoir · state assessment record

Sacheen Lake

Assessment decisions reported by Washington to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.

307
Assessed acres
Lake / Reservoir / Pond
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Sacheen Lake, a reservoir in Washington, 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 in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting.

Not Supporting
overall status
P86
Assessed size nationally
P20
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.

C-
Water Quality Standing
50/100
Sacheen Lake

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.

RecreationN/A
Not assessed
Swimming, boating, and other primary/secondary contact recreation
Drinking WaterN/A
Not assessed
Suitability as a public drinking-water source
Aquatic LifeF
Not supporting
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionN/A
Not assessed
Safety of eating fish caught in this water
Impairment BurdenA+
1 cause
Filed pollutant/stressor causes, vs. the national corpus of assessed active units
Assessment CurrencyB+
2022
Reporting cycle this record’s verdicts were last decided in

Where Sacheen 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: assessed size

The number that most separates Sacheen Lake nationally is assessed size: 307 acres, larger than 86% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.

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.

Sacheen Lake: Category 4C reading

Category 4C marks impairment from pollution that is not a pollutant (for example habitat or flow alteration) on Sacheen Lake. A classic TMDL load model often does not apply; the cause list should name the non-pollutant stressor.

Overall status: not supporting

The filer's overall status for Sacheen Lake is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.

Typical cause-list length

1 listed cause is a middle-tercile list length among assessed lake-type units. Look to IR category and use outcomes for the distinctive reading.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Washington carries 832 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Sacheen Lake without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2022
Washington Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 4C
Uses with verdicts
1
Definitive use assessments
Sources retrieved
2026-08-17
Portal-wide ATTAINS + NWIS pull

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
Aquatic Life - General Aquatic-life or related Not Supporting
Aquatic Life - Core Summer Salmonid Habitat Aquatic-life or related Insufficient Information
Aquatic Life - Toxics Aquatic-life or related Insufficient Information
Harvesting Fish-consumption or fishery Insufficient Information
Recreation - Primary Contact Recreation Insufficient Information

The record

Listed impairment causes

Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this reservoir, with the cycle each was first listed. None is a pollutant, so none carries a TMDL cleanup plan.

Cause Affected uses First listed Cleanup standing
Non-Native Aquatic Plants Aquatic Life - General 2004 Not applicable (non-pollutant)

Reading the record

Sacheen Lake: Category 4C reading

4C Category 4C: impaired by a non-pollutant; TMDL programme does not apply

Washington filed this assessment unit as Category 4C: the impairment is not caused by a pollutant, so the Clean Water Act 303(d) cleanup-plan (TMDL) programme, which allocates pollutant loads, does not apply here.

A 4C listing is still an impairment finding about designated uses; it is not a clean bill of health. How listing and cleanup work.

Scale and rank

Sacheen Lake is one of 832 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Washington, and one of 385 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 307 assessed acres it ranks 5,278th 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 5,277 lakes with a larger one.

Not yet on record

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.

In context

Where Sacheen 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

307 Top 14% larger than 86% 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 Sacheen Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

Washington context

ATTAINS carries 832 lake-type waterbodies in Washington, 393 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 0 fully supporting. Among the 385 indexed units there, Sacheen Lake ranks 149th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 36th by assessed size among the 385 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (393 statewide) . Its listed causes include Non-Native Aquatic Plants, which also appears among Washington's most-filed impairment causes (led by Non-Native Aquatic Plants).

Other large assessed lakes in Washington Assessed acres
Bumping Lake Not Assessed 1,354
Sullivan Lake Not Supporting 1,298
Deer Lake Not Supporting 1,146
Loon Lake Not Supporting 1,094
American Lake Not Supporting 1,092
Newman Lake Not Supporting 1,091

Peers near Sacheen Lake's size or cause load

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.

How peers are picked

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 WA17010308000653_001_001. 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.