Michigan lake · state assessment record
Wolf Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Michigan to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2018 reporting cycle.
- 25
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Wolf Lake, a lake in Michigan, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2018). By assessed acreage it sits below the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes).
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P38
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- Shorter cause list
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.
Where Wolf 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: cause-list length
The standout filed fact is a short cause list: 0 causes, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. A short list can mean a focused impairment, or a shallow assessment.
IR category in the supporting band
EPA's Integrated Report category for Wolf Lake is 2. In ATTAINS that band means the assessed uses are supporting (or supporting with other waters in the unit), so the narrative weight shifts to how deep the assessment went and whether monitoring is current, not to a restoration plan.
Overall status: fully supporting
Overall status is Fully Supporting. If an IR category or cause row still appears, it usually reflects a prior listing path or a use the overall rollup does not collapse, read those sections rather than stopping at the tile.
Mid-pack assessed size
25.3 acres lands in the middle tercile of units with an area filed. Acreage is not what distinguishes this record from its peers.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Michigan carries 4,307 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Wolf 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.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Industrial Water Supply | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Navigation | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Cold Water Fishery | Aquatic-life or related | Insufficient Information Filer confidence: Good |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Assessed |
| Other Indigenous Aquatic Life and Wildlife | Aquatic-life or related | Not Assessed |
| Partial Body Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Assessed |
| Total Body Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Assessed |
| Warm Water Fishery | Aquatic-life or related | Not Assessed |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.
Reading the record
Wolf Lake: Category 2 reading
2 Category 2: some uses supported, others not assessed
Michigan filed this assessment unit as Category 2: some designated uses are supported and others were not assessed in this cycle. Absence of a failing verdict is not the same as a full Category 1 finding.
Scale and rank
Wolf Lake is one of 4,307 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Michigan. It is not among the 776 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 25 assessed acres it ranks 23,949th 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 23,948 lakes with a larger one.
What this record holds
Michigan completed an assessment here and listed no impairment cause, so the record holds a verdict and its supporting use rows but no pollutant to track over time. The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict, 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.
Why no water-level record
Wolf 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 Wolf 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
25 Top 62% larger than 38% 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
0 Among the shortest cause lists fewer listed causes than 51% 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 Wolf Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Michigan context
ATTAINS carries 4,307 lake-type waterbodies in Michigan, 807 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 3,457 fully supporting.
| Other large assessed lakes in Michigan | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Lake Huron (Michigan Jurisdiction) Not Supporting | 5,815,360 |
| Lake Michigan South of Frankfort (Michigan Jurisdiction) Not Supporting | 5,665,920 |
| St. Marys River Not Supporting | 129,983 |
| Lake St. Clair (Michigan Jurisdiction) Not Supporting | 103,616 |
| Lake Erie (Michigan Jurisdiction) Not Supporting | 71,680 |
| Houghton Lake Not Supporting | 20,066 |
Peers near Wolf Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (25 acres here).
- Mud · 25 acres · MN
- Valley Creek Lakes · 25 acres · ID
- Lake Florida · 25 acres · FL
- Church Lake · 25 acres · FL
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 31st Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 42nd Avenue East Beach · 0 causes · MN
- 59th Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- <Null> · 0 causes · OR
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 MI040500012403-04. 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.