WHAT’S BEYOND THE TAP

North Carolina · waterway · Upper Catawba basin

Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935): what state assessments show

No failing determinations on record for the uses assessed.

That covers what the state assessed — not what it hasn't.

Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935) in the Upper Catawba basin is tracked by the state as 2 separately assessed stretches (most recent cycle: 2022). Below is every designated-use determination on record — and what hasn't been assessed.

Designated uses

Swimming & recreation

Tested, but not enough information to decide

Is it safe to swim here?

Aquatic life

Supports healthy aquatic life

Can fish and aquatic insects live here?

Use as a drinking-water source

Meets standards as a drinking-water source

Can this water be used as a drinking-water supply?

A use the state didn't report is omitted rather than shown as passing. "Never assessed" means unknown — never clean.

Assessed stretches

The state tracks this waterway as 2 assessment units — a stretch can fail a standard while another meets it.

Assessment unit IDs (2)

NC11-(53) · NC11-(59.5)

What the record doesn’t establish

  • Whether fish caught in Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935) are safe to eat — no fish-consumption assessment on record here.
  • What today's water looks like — assessments are determinations made on multi-year cycles, not live measurements.

Common questions

Is it safe to swim in Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935)?

The state has not rated Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935) for swimming — that's a gap in the record, not a clean result.

Can you eat fish caught in Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935)?

The state has not rated Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935) for fish consumption — unknown, not clean.

How current is this assessment?

The most recent reporting cycle on record is 2022. States assess waters under the Clean Water Act on multi-year cycles, so conditions can change between assessments. The sources table shows when this snapshot was retrieved.

Sources

DatasetAgency versionRetrieved
EPA/state ATTAINS waterway assessmentsATTAINS_Assessment ArcGIS snapshot (gispub.epa.gov)2026-08-15
ATTAINS waterway geometryATTAINS_Assessment ArcGIS lines + areas (gispub.epa.gov)2026-08-16
USGS watershed boundariesUSGS WBD via National Map MapServer2026-08-15

Records lag their agencies' refresh cycles — a recent change may not appear yet. Absence from a dataset is absence of a record, never evidence that water is clean.

Also in the Upper Catawba basin

Go deeper

Search an address near Catawba River (lake Hickory Below Elevation 935) to see how it connects — what drains toward it, monitoring-station samples, and permitted operations in its watershed.

Search an address