Wisconsin reservoir · state assessment record
White Tail Flowage
In Jackson 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.
- 94
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
White Tail Flowage, a reservoir 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 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). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as not supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P69
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- aquatic life
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 White Tail Flowage 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: monitoring lag
The signature tension is currency: the reporting cycle is 2022 while monitoring evidence runs through 2010, a 12-year gap. Cycle year and last-monitored year move independently in ATTAINS; this page shows both.
The uses disagree
This record splits: Not Supporting on fish consumption, Fully Supporting on aquatic life. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.
White Tail Flowage: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for White Tail Flowage. 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 White Tail Flowage is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Large assessed unit
At 94 acres, White Tail Flowage clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (12,178 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
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 White Tail Flowage 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. The latest monitoring Wisconsin filed against this record runs through 2010. 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 one definitive verdict it rated: Low. 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 Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Supporting |
| Fish and Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Low |
| Public Health and Welfare | Recreation | Not Assessed |
| Recreation | 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 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 | 2002 | TMDL priority: Low |
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.
- Mercury
- Atmospheric Deposition - Toxics (confirmed)
Reading the record
How current is White Tail Flowage's evidence?
12 years between the 2022 reporting cycle and monitoring through 2010
The latest monitoring Wisconsin filed against this record runs through 2010. 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.
The cycle is when the state reported; the monitoring year, where filed, is when it measured. How to read assessment currency.
Scale and rank
White Tail Flowage 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 94 assessed acres it ranks 12,179th 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 12,178 lakes with a larger one.
Awaiting a filing
The state has not yet filed a definitive recreation 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.
In context
Where White Tail Flowage 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
94 Top 31% larger than 69% 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 White Tail Flowage. 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, White Tail Flowage ranks 315th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 763rd by assessed size among the 1,170 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (493 statewide) . Its listed causes include Mercury, 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 White Tail Flowage's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (94 acres here).
- Ashley Lake · 94 acres · MA
- Barton Lake · 94 acres · IN
- Grama Lake · 94 acres · OK
- Heart Pond · 94 acres · MA
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 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 WI10003143. 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.