Arkansas lake · state assessment record

Winona Lake (1,240 acres)

Assessment decisions reported by Arkansas to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle. The cleanup plan below was established by EPA rather than by Arkansas.

1,240
Assessed acres
Lake, Freshwater
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Winona Lake, a lake in Arkansas, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2022). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 5% by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as not supporting.

Not Supporting
overall status
P95
Assessed size nationally
P10
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.

C+
Water Quality Standing
63/100
Winona 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.

RecreationN/A
Not assessed
Swimming, boating, and other primary/secondary contact recreation
Drinking WaterA+
Meeting criteria
Suitability as a public drinking-water source
Aquatic LifeA+
Meeting criteria
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionF
Not supporting
Safety of eating fish caught in this water
Impairment BurdenF
2 causes
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

Reading Winona Lake'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 Arkansas, cause-list rank is the local separator: Winona Lake is 3 of 69 indexed units by listed-cause count, toward the top of that state's filed lists.

Large assessed unit

At 1,240 acres, Winona Lake clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (1,951 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.

A split ruling across uses

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.

Winona Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed

Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Winona Lake. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.

Longer than most cause lists

2 listed causes puts this unit above 80% of assessed lake-type records by list length. Treat that as a coding-and-sampling signal: states that split pollutants finely mint longer lists without proving worse water.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Arkansas carries 144 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Winona Lake without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

EPA-established cleanup plan. EPA, not Arkansas, established the cleanup plan on this record. ATTAINS records the agency responsible for each determination and records EPA's for these; it does not record why. The Clean Water Act provides for EPA to establish a load itself where a state does not submit one, or where EPA disapproves the one it submits.
Reporting cycle
2022
Arkansas Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 5
Uses with verdicts
6
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.

Designated use Group Verdict
Agricultural Water Supply Other Fully Supporting
Aquatic Life Aquatic-life or related Fully Supporting
Domestic Water Supply Drinking-water supply designation Fully Supporting
Fish Consumption Fish-consumption or fishery Not Supporting
Industrial Water Supply Other Fully Supporting
Other Uses Other Not Supporting
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 lake, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.

Cause Affected uses First listed Cleanup standing
Mercury in Fish Tissue Fish Consumption 1998 TMDL established by EPA
pH Other Uses 2020 TMDL priority: Medium

Reading the record

EPA plan standing on Winona Lake

1 cleanup plan EPA established here

EPA, not Arkansas, established that plan.

How listing and cleanup work.

Scale and rank

Winona Lake is one of 144 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Arkansas, and one of 69 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 1,240 assessed acres it ranks 1,952nd 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 1,951 lakes with a larger one.

Not yet on record

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.

In context

Where Winona 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

1,240 Top 5% larger than 95% 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

2 Longer than most more listed causes than 80% 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 Winona Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

Arkansas context

ATTAINS carries 144 lake-type waterbodies in Arkansas, 62 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 55 fully supporting. Among the 69 indexed units there, Winona Lake ranks 3rd by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 19th by assessed size among the 69 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (62 statewide) . Its listed causes include Mercury in Fish Tissue and pH, which also appear among Arkansas's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury in Fish Tissue).

Other large assessed lakes in Arkansas Assessed acres
Dardanelle Lake Fully Supporting 34,041
Millwood Lake Fully Supporting 29,500
Ouachita Lake Fully Supporting 24,695
Bull Shoals Not Supporting 22,046
Greers Ferry Lake Fully Supporting 18,151
Felsenthal Lake Not Supporting 14,000

Peers near Winona Lake's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (1,240 acres here).

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (2 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.

How peers are picked

What to do with this record

  • The fish-consumption use is assessed as not supporting. Before eating fish from this lake, 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 AR_08040203_4100. 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.