Wilkes County Lake Quality

Wilkes County has 1 monitored lake — a thin enough sample that one or two stressed lakes can move the county average noticeably. Use the per-lake pages below for what actually matters. Every one of those lake carries an A–F grade, so the county-level summary covers the full set rather than a monitored subset. On average, Wilkes County lakes grade D, with phosphorus loading and reduced clarity showing up across most of the dataset.

Most of the county's monitored lakes are shallow — under 50 feet — which means wind keeps the water column mixed all summer and sediment-bound phosphorus releases back into the surface layer whenever the bottom is disturbed. Kerr Scott Reservoir (D) is the cleanest in the county.