Impaired Lakes in Florida
0 of 2,195 graded Florida lakes (0%) are officially listed as impaired under Clean Water Act §303(d) in the most recent EPA ATTAINS reporting cycle.
Reading the Florida impairment landscape
Florida reports 0 impaired lakes — 0% of the state's 2,195 tracked water bodies. By national standards, this is a comparatively limited share: most Florida lakes are not §303(d)-listed for any pollutant. The impaired set below tends to cluster around specific land uses (agricultural runoff, legacy contamination, urbanized watersheds) and is worth checking for the listed causes before trips involving water contact.
The leading impairment cause in Florida is multiple pollutants. Each impairment category carries its own use-restriction implications — some affect fish consumption, some affect swimming, some affect aquatic-life habitat. Click through to the specific lake records below for the pollutant list and the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) status, which determines whether a cleanup plan is in place.
Impaired-waters listings come from the state environmental agency's §303(d) submission to EPA, refreshed on a roughly 2-year cycle. A listed lake stays on the list until either a TMDL is established and the cleanup completes, or subsequent monitoring shows the pollutant concentrations no longer exceed water-quality standards. The list below reflects the most recent available Florida submission to the EPA Assessment, Total Maximum Daily Load Tracking and Implementation System (ATTAINS) dataset.
All 0 EPA-Listed Impaired Lakes in Florida
No impaired lakes match the current ATTAINS records for Florida.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many lakes are impaired in Florida?
No Florida lakes in our dataset matched the EPA ATTAINS 303(d) impaired list. Either Florida's assessment unit names don't match our naming convention, or the matching data isn't yet integrated.
What does Clean Water Act §303(d) mean?
Section 303(d) of the federal Clean Water Act requires every state to identify waters that don't meet water quality standards even after pollution control measures. Each listed water must then have a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) developed — a plan that caps how much of each pollutant can enter the waterbody. The "303(d) list" is the impaired-waters list. The EPA reviews each state's list every two years.
What are the top causes of impairment in Florida?
Causes vary by state. The most common nationally are mercury in fish tissue, nutrient enrichment (phosphorus + nitrogen) from agricultural runoff, pathogens (E. coli) near urban areas, and PCBs in older urban watersheds.
Can I swim in an impaired lake?
It depends on the cause of impairment. A lake impaired for "mercury in fish tissue" is generally safe to swim in — the warning is about long-term consumption of fish. A lake impaired for "pathogens" (E. coli) or "algal growth" may pose a swimming risk and often has a separate beach advisory. Check the cause categories listed for each lake below, and consult your state health department's beach monitoring program for current advisories.
Where does this impairment data come from?
Every impairment record on this page comes from the EPA's ATTAINS (Assessment and TMDL Tracking and Implementation System) public dataset, the federal repository of state-reported water quality assessments. EPA ATTAINS is published as GeoParquet files on the EPA Office of Water S3 bucket and refreshed several times per year. Causes and use-support codes follow EPA's standard taxonomy.
Data source
Impairment data from the EPA ATTAINS (Assessment and TMDL Tracking and Implementation System) public dataset. Assessment unit IDs are matched to LakeGrade waterbodies by name and proximity; some lakes may not appear here if their ATTAINS name doesn't match our naming convention. For an official query, consult Florida's state water-quality agency.