Indiana lake · state assessment record
Sylvan Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Indiana to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2012 reporting cycle.
- 630
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
- 9.2 ft
- Gage Height (provisional)
This waterbody in one line
Sylvan Lake, a lake in Indiana, 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 among the largest 10% by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Indiana assesses human health and wildlife as not supported; it reported no verdict on fish consumption itself. A USGS gauge tracks its gage height daily.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P92
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
- Not 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.
How Sylvan Lake reads against 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 Sylvan Lake nationally is assessed size: 630 acres, larger than 92% 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, fish consumption, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Sylvan Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Sylvan 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 Sylvan 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, Indiana carries 1,588 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Sylvan 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. Indiana filed its own confidence on the one definitive verdict 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Human Health and Wildlife | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Full Body Contact | Recreation | Not Assessed |
| Warm Water Aquatic Life | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCBs in Fish Tissue | Human Health and Wildlife | 2006 | TMDL priority: Low |
Reading the record
Where Sylvan Lake sits among peers
48% of Indiana's lakes assessed this deeply also had no use supported
Indiana ruled definitively on a single designated use at Sylvan Lake and found it not supported. The dataset shows 151 Indiana lakes judged to that same depth.
Indiana'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 | 79 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 38 | 12 | 5 | 0 |
| None supported | 72 (this record) | 15 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: Sylvan Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Sylvan Lake is one of 1,588 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Indiana, and one of 162 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 630 assessed acres it ranks 3,173rd 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 3,172 lakes with a larger one.
Water level
A USGS gauge tracks this lake's gage height daily, and the latest reading is 0.11 ft above the reading 30 days earlier, against a 365-day observed range of 1.7 ft. 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.
Water level: 365-day record
Daily gage height values, feet above this gauge’s own local zero, not above sea level, from USGS gauge 04100180 (Sylvan Lake at Rome City, in), shown weekly. Readings are daily-batch snapshots, not real-time conditions. Each daily value is a single reading taken at 24:00, not a daily mean. It is the only daily statistic USGS files for this gauge.
- Latest reading
- 9.2 ft 0.10999999999999943ft vs 30 days earlier
- 2026-08-15 · Provisional, subject to USGS revision
Water level: 365-day record
Subscribe to water level updates for Sylvan Lake (RSS)
159 of the 364 daily values in this window (44%) are provisional and subject to USGS revision; USGS has approved this gauge's record through 2026-03-09.
Full gauge record: USGS monitoring location 04100180
In context
Where Sylvan 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
630 Top 8% larger than 92% 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 Sylvan Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Indiana context
ATTAINS carries 1,588 lake-type waterbodies in Indiana, 145 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 96 fully supporting. Among the 162 indexed units there, Sylvan Lake ranks 49th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 27th by assessed size among the 156 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (145 statewide) . Its listed causes include PCBs in Fish Tissue, which also appears among Indiana's most-filed impairment causes (led by PCBs in Fish Tissue).
| Other large assessed lakes in Indiana | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Lake Michigan (Not Indexed) (Salmonid) (Osrw) Not Supporting | 154,176 |
| Patoka Reservoir (Pws) Fully Supporting | 8,880 |
| Monroe Reservoir (Lower) (Pws) Not Supporting | 6,863 |
| Brookville Reservoir Not Supporting | 5,260 |
| Monroe Reservoir (Upper) (Pws) Not Supporting | 3,887 |
| Wawasee, Lake Not Supporting | 3,410 |
Peers near Sylvan Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (630 acres here).
- Lake Conroe · 630 acres · TX
- Tsala Apopka Lake (Floral City Arm) · 630 acres · FL
- Ida · 630 acres · MN
- Lake Garfield · 630 acres · FL
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
- Abeniki Lake · 1 causes · NH
What to do with this record
- The listing here is on a fishery use, not on fish consumption, and this state reported no consumption verdict for this lake. Your state fish-advisory program is the source for whether the catch is safe to eat. Consumption status guide
- Water levels shown are daily snapshots. Seasonal drawdown and datum conventions matter when comparing levels. How to read level data
- 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 INJ01P1248_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.