Alabama reservoir · state assessment record
Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake)
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 2010 reporting cycle.
- 346
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee 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 (2010). By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes). Alabama assesses fishing as supported; it reported no verdict on fish consumption itself.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P88
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- fish-consumption or fishery
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.
Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake) against the ATTAINS 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: monitoring lag
The signature tension is currency: the reporting cycle is 2010 while monitoring evidence runs through 1995, a 15-year gap. Cycle year and last-monitored year move independently in ATTAINS; this page shows both.
Shorter than most cause lists
Only 0 causes on file, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. Pair the short list with the use matrix: a single Not Supporting use can still be the whole story.
Large assessed unit
At 346.4 acres, Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake) clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (4,817 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
All ruled-on uses pass
The filed use determinations for fish consumption, recreation 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.
IR category in the supporting band
EPA's Integrated Report category for Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake) is 2. 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 Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee 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. Alabama filed 1995 as the year this waterbody was last monitored. Alabama filed its own confidence on the 4 definitive verdicts it rated: Good. That rating is the filer's, in EPA's own field, and EPA publishes no definition of the four words it offers.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Contact Recreation | Recreation | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Drinking and Food Processing | Drinking-water supply designation | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Fishing | Fish-consumption or fishery | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Industrial and Agriculture Uses | Other | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Propagation of Fish and Wildlife | Aquatic-life or related | Insufficient Information Filer confidence: Good |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this reservoir.
Reading the record
Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake): Category 2 reading
2 Category 2: some uses supported, others not assessed
Alabama filed this assessment unit as Category 2: some designated uses are supported and others were not assessed in this cycle. Absence of a failing verdict is not the same as a full Category 1 finding.
Scale and rank
Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee 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 346 assessed acres it ranks 4,818th 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 4,817 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. The state has not yet filed a definitive aquatic-life verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.
Reported trophic class
Alabama 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 Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee 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
346 Top 12% larger than 88% 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 Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee 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, Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake) ranks 212th by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 158th 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 Sougahatchee Creek (Sougahatchee Lake)'s size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (346 acres here).
- Housatonic Lake (Shelton/Derby/Seymour/Oxford/Monroe) · 346 acres · CT
- Irma · 346 acres · MN
- Back Lake · 346 acres · NH
- Bullhead Lake · 347 acres · SD
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 AL03150110-0102-102. 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.