Wisconsin lake · state assessment record

Stewart Lake

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

5.79
Assessed acres
Lake, Freshwater
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Stewart Lake, a lake in Wisconsin, 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 among the smaller assessed lakes nationally (38,628 lakes with a filed area); 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
P12
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.

F
Water Quality Standing
35/100
Stewart 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.

RecreationF
Not supporting
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 Stewart 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

What stands out first is how small the assessed unit is: 5.8 acres, smaller than 88% of the 38,628 lake-type units carrying an area.

Every filed use falls short

On the uses this filer ruled on, recreation, aquatic life, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.

Stewart Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed

Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Stewart Lake. 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 Stewart 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, Wisconsin carries 19,871 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Stewart Lake without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2022
Monitored through 2020 · Wisconsin Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 5
Uses with verdicts
2
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. The latest monitoring Wisconsin filed against this record runs through 2020. For the definitive verdicts on this record, Wisconsin filed the assessment basis as Monitored Data. Those are EPA's own words, not PlainLakes' summary of them. Wisconsin filed its own confidence on the 2 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
Fish and Aquatic Life Aquatic-life or related Not Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Recreation Recreation Not Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Fish Consumption Fish-consumption or fishery Not Assessed
Public Health and Welfare Recreation Not Assessed
Wildlife Aquatic-life or related 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
Phosphorus, Total Recreation; Fish and Aquatic Life 2022 TMDL priority: Medium

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.

Phosphorus, Total
Non-Point Source (suspected)

Reading the record

Where Stewart Lake sits among peers

18% of Wisconsin's lakes assessed this deeply also had no use supported

Wisconsin ruled definitively on 2 designated uses at Stewart Lake and found none of them supported. The dataset shows 889 Wisconsin lakes judged to that same depth.

Wisconsin's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use; this one was judged on 2.

18 N

Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.

Share of Wisconsin lakes judged on 2 designated uses with the same outcome
Assessed lakes in Wisconsin by how many uses were ruled on and how those rulings came out
Less More
Assessed lakes in Wisconsin by how many uses were ruled on and how those rulings came out (lakes)
12345+
All supported 3.5k60912111
Mixed Not possible11811220
None supported 78162 (this record)2010

Ringed cell: Stewart Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.

Scale and rank

Stewart Lake is one of 19,871 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Wisconsin, and one of 1,219 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 5.79 assessed acres it ranks 34,040th 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 34,039 lakes with a larger one.

Not yet on record

The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.

Reported trophic class

Wisconsin 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.

Why no water-level record

Stewart Lake has no daily USGS water-level or reservoir-storage series on this page because NWIS lists a lake monitoring site named for the waterbody, but the site is not active, and PlainLakes ingests only the active inventory, so there is no series to attach. How PlainLakes links gauges.

In context

Where Stewart 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

6 Top 88% larger than 12% 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 Stewart Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

Wisconsin context

ATTAINS carries 19,871 lake-type waterbodies in Wisconsin, 493 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 4,225 fully supporting. Among the 1,219 indexed units there, Stewart Lake ranks 443rd by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 1,166th by assessed size among the 1,170 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (493 statewide) . Its listed causes include Phosphorus, Total, which also appears among Wisconsin's most-filed impairment causes (led by Phosphorus, Total).

Other large assessed lakes in Wisconsin Assessed acres
Lake Winnebago Not Supporting 131,942
Lake Pepin Not Supporting 25,503
Petenwell Lake Not Supporting 23,001
Lake Poygan Not Supporting 14,024
Lake Chippewa Fully Supporting 13,616
Turtle Flambeau Flowage Not Supporting 12,943

Peers near Stewart Lake's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (5.79 acres here).

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 WI10002700. 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.