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Cleaner Lakes Than Billy Boy Flowage Lake
4 lakes with lower nutrient and algae readings nearby, ranked by grade improvement and proximity.
Billy Boy Flowage Lake carries nutrient and algae readings on record. Within 30 miles, 4 lakes read lower. Lac Courte Oreilles Lake (Sawyer County, Grade A) is the closest meaningful upgrade.
Reviewed by LakeQuality Editorial Team · Updated
Reading the cohort
4 cleaner lakes sit within 30 miles of Billy Boy Flowage Lake in the EPA water-quality dataset. With that many lower-nutrient neighbors close by, Billy Boy Flowage Lake's readings reflect something specific to the lake itself, not a regional water-quality ceiling. The neighbor list below isn't a small set of marginal upgrades; it's a real cohort of meaningfully cleaner choices for the same Wisconsin weekend.
The closest cleaner alternative, Lac Courte Oreilles Lake in Sawyer County, sits miles from Billy Boy Flowage Lake. At that distance, the substitution cost is essentially zero: same drive time, same regional access, demonstrably cleaner water on the EPA indicators. For repeat visitors who care about clarity or phosphorus levels, swapping the routine to Lac Courte Oreilles Lake is mostly a habit change rather than a logistics change.
Each lake's nutrient and algae readings — total phosphorus, total nitrogen, chlorophyll-a, and turbidity — are shown beside the EPA National Lakes Assessment 2022 condition class for that lake's own ecoregion, so a reading is compared against the lakes it would naturally resemble. LakeQuality publishes no letter grade. Lower readings mean measurably less nutrient and algae in the water, not better scenery or access: the lake with the clearest, lowest-nutrient water can have worse boat-launch facilities or shoreline access than a neighbor, so the comparison is one input alongside the rest of trip planning. How the readings are classified is on our methodology page.
How this list is built
Sampled lakes on LakeQuality carry readings from EPA Water Quality Portal samples — nutrients and algae measured against EPA National Lakes Assessment ecoregion classes. Secchi is shown, not scored. To suggest cleaner alternatives, we filter lakes within 30 miles to those with a strictly higher numeric score, then rank by the size of the improvement with a small proximity tiebreak. Cross-state and limited-data lakes are excluded so the list stays locally relevant.