Minnesota lake · state assessment record
South School Section
Assessment decisions reported by Minnesota to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2012 reporting cycle.
- 92
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
South School Section, a lake in Minnesota, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2012). By assessed acreage it sits above the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes).
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P68
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
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 South School Section 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 Minnesota, cause-list rank 1453 of 1,939 is mid-pack, the state peer table is not driven by an extreme list length here.
Every ruled-on use is not supporting
On the uses this filer ruled on, recreation, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
South School Section: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for South School Section. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for South School Section is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Small within Minnesota
State size rank 1564 of 1,930 puts South School Section toward the small end of Minnesota's indexed lake-type units with an area.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Minnesota carries 13,176 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to South School Section 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting |
| Aquatic Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nutrients | Aquatic Recreation | 2002 | TMDL priority: Medium |
Reading the record
Where South School Section sits among peers
33% of Minnesota's lakes assessed this deeply also had no use supported
Minnesota ruled definitively on a single designated use at South School Section and found it not supported. The dataset shows 2,056 Minnesota lakes judged to that same depth.
Minnesota's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use, 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 | 1.4k | 169 | 7 | 1 | 16 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 526 | 341 | 17 | 10 |
| None supported | 682 (this record) | 159 | 62 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: South School Section. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
South School Section is one of 13,176 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Minnesota, and one of 1,939 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 92 assessed acres it ranks 12,407th 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 12,406 lakes with a larger one.
Still unfiled
The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict and a definitive aquatic-life verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.
In context
Where South School Section 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
92 Top 32% larger than 68% 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 South School Section. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Minnesota context
ATTAINS carries 13,176 lake-type waterbodies in Minnesota, 1,798 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 1,566 fully supporting. Among the 1,939 indexed units there, South School Section ranks 1,453rd by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 1,564th by assessed size among the 1,930 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (1,798 statewide) . Its listed causes include Nutrients, which also appears among Minnesota's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury in Fish Tissue).
| Other large assessed lakes in Minnesota | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Superior Not Supporting | 13,182,720 |
| Lake of the Woods Not Supporting | 301,348 |
| Red (Lower Red) Not reported | 164,699 |
| Lower Red Lake Fully Supporting | 164,689 |
| Mille Lacs Not Supporting | 128,076 |
| Red (Upper Red) Not Supporting | 119,279 |
Peers near South School Section's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (92 acres here).
- East Inlet Flowage - East Inlet Dam · 92 acres · NH
- Big Gant Lake · 92 acres · FL
- Brown Lake · 92 acres · WI
- Lake Anna/Gold Mine Creek · 92 acres · VA
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Aaron River Reservoir · 1 causes · MA
- Abbotts Creek (including Lexington-Thomasville Water Supply Reservoir at normal reservoir elevation, Tom-A-Lex Lake) · 1 causes · NC
- Abeniki Lake · 1 causes · NH
- Academy Brook II Dam · 1 causes · NH
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 MN82-0151-00. 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.