Hickory County Lake Quality

Hickory County holds 2 monitored lakes. With a sample that small the county-level summary describes those specific waters, not necessarily every water body in the county. Every one of those lakes carries recent nutrient and algae readings, so the county-level summary covers the full set rather than a monitored subset. For Hickory County the spread behind the average matters more than the average itself: a few nutrient-rich lakes among many clear ones produce the same figure as the inverse.

The county's lakes lean shallow, which makes the readings sensitive to wind, sediment-resuspension, and any nutrient inputs from the watershed. The cleanest measured lake is Pomme de Terre L. Central Arm Lake.