Updated Aug 2026
New Mexico Lake Water Quality
326 lakes across 30 counties, 50 with a recent water-quality reading.
Lake Map
Get New Mexico water-quality updates
New water-quality readings for New Mexico lakes as NMED publishes them. Unsubscribe anytime.
Where to stay near New Mexico's cleanest lakes
Cabins, resorts, and vacation rentals around Abiquiu Reservoir Chama R Inlet and the other cleanest New Mexico lakes pinned on the map. Live availability and prices.
Top-rated places to stay near Abiquiu Reservoir Chama R Inlet
Prices for Oct 30–Nov 1, 4 adults. Change dates on the map below.
Availability and prices from Stay22 partners (Booking.com, Vrbo, Expedia). We may earn a commission from bookings, at no extra cost to you.
Explore New Mexico Lakes
New Mexico reports, fishing & travel
Reservoirs in New Mexico
View all 39 reservoirs →39 of 326 New Mexico lakes (12%) are man-made reservoirs in the USACE National Inventory of Dams. 36 carry a High or Significant hazard rating. The oldest matched dam dates to 1900.
EPA-Impaired Lakes in New Mexico
View all 40 impaired lakes →40 of 326 New Mexico lakes (12%) are officially listed as impaired under Clean Water Act §303(d) in the most recent EPA ATTAINS reporting cycle. 5 have an approved Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) restoration plan.
New Mexico Fishing & Recreation
Licenses, regulations, records, and where to fish across New Mexico.
Counties
All 30 New Mexico counties, ranked by average lake water quality. Compare them against every county nationwide in the county rankings, browse the full directory of lakes, or pick a different state.
New Mexico lists 326 lakes across 30 counties, 50 of them with a recent water-quality reading. Most of that sampling flows through monitoring run by the New Mexico Environment Department, which feeds state, federal, and volunteer measurements into the EPA Water Quality Portal. The remainder are here because they are real named lakes, not because anyone has sampled them recently.
By surface area the largest lake here is E Butte Lake, at about 42,750 acres, and 28 of the lakes in this index cover more than 500 acres. Size is worth knowing before you go: a large deep basin buffers nutrient inputs by sheer volume, while a shallow one warms quickly and can turn over its whole water column in a single summer storm. San Miguel has the lowest nutrient and algae readings on average. With only 30 counties in the state, the cross-county spread is narrower than the within-county spread for most lakes.
Lake Match
Which lake suits how you actually use one?
Six questions — swimming, fishing, quiet, cabins, drive time — and a shortlist of lakes that fit, with the water quality behind each one.
Source: EPA National Aquatic Resource Surveys and the EPA Water Quality Portal.
More on lake water quality
A data snapshot of the lakes we track: the clearest and the greenest states, and where the water is improving.
How nutrient and algae readings are read against EPA ecoregion condition classes, what each class means in the water, and why a clean reading is not a clearance.
The clearest lakes in America, ranked by measured Secchi depth in feet from EPA monitoring data — and why the famously clear lakes are missing.