New Hampshire reservoir · state assessment record
Spectacle Pond (30 acres)
Assessment decisions reported by New Hampshire to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 30
- Assessed acres
- Lake / Reservoir / Pond
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Spectacle Pond, a reservoir in New Hampshire, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits below 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). Fish consumption is assessed as not supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P43
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
- Not Supporting
- fish consumption
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.
Reading Spectacle Pond's filed record
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 New Hampshire, cause-list rank 869 of 2,233 is mid-pack, the state peer table is not driven by an extreme list length here.
No ruled-on use clears the bar
On the uses this filer ruled on, fish consumption, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Spectacle Pond: Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Spectacle Pond. 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 Spectacle Pond is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Large within New Hampshire
Among New Hampshire's 2,233 indexed units with an area, Spectacle Pond ranks 543 by assessed size, toward the large end of that state file.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, New Hampshire carries 2,786 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Spectacle Pond 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. Monitoring behind at least one of these designated-use verdicts ran through 2023, as New Hampshire filed it. For the definitive verdicts on this record, New Hampshire filed the assessment basis as Monitored Data. Those are EPA's own words, not PlainLakes' summary of them.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Supporting |
| Potential Drinking Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Fully Supporting |
| Aquatic Life Integrity | Aquatic-life or related | Insufficient Information |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
| Secondary Contact Recreation | 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 and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury - Fish Consumption Advisory | Fish Consumption | 2002 | TMDL approved |
Reading the record
Spectacle Pond: Category 4A reading
4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed
New Hampshire 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
Spectacle Pond is one of 2,786 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from New Hampshire, and one of 2,233 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 30 assessed acres it ranks 22,182nd 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 22,181 lakes with a larger one.
Awaiting a filing
The state has not yet filed a definitive recreation 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 Spectacle Pond 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
30 Top 57% larger than 43% 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 Spectacle Pond. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
New Hampshire context
ATTAINS carries 2,786 lake-type waterbodies in New Hampshire, 2,783 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 0 fully supporting. Among the 2,233 indexed units there, Spectacle Pond ranks 869th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 543rd by assessed size among the 2,233 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (2,783 statewide) . Its listed causes include Mercury - Fish Consumption Advisory, which also appears among New Hampshire's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury - Fish Consumption Advisory).
| Other large assessed lakes in New Hampshire | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Lake Winnipesaukee Not Supporting | 44,315 |
| Squam Lake Not Supporting | 6,774 |
| Lake Umbagog Not Supporting | 4,639 |
| Newfound Lake Not Supporting | 4,440 |
| Lake Winnisquam Not Supporting | 4,203 |
| Sunapee Lake Not Supporting | 4,115 |
Peers near Spectacle Pond's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (30 acres here).
- Clear Lake · 30 acres · MI
- Ambush · 30 acres · MN
- Campbell Lake · 30 acres · WI
- Gregg · 30 acres · MN
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Aaron · 1 causes · MN
- 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
- Ackleys Pond-02050106002791 · 1 causes · PA
What to do with this record
- The fish-consumption use is assessed as not supporting. Before eating fish from this reservoir, check your state fish-advisory program for species-specific meal limits. 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 NHLAK700010801-02. 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.