Update.
In August, I invited Greg Grimes to visit me (we have used Greg and his company in the past-he's a good guy) and give me his assessment of the situation. I also asked my neighbor to be there so he'd hear the same thing I did. Greg tested the depth of the silting and found that the only place with any "significant" silting was at the mouth of the creek where he estimated the depth at 3' (three feet). But this was in a very small area relative to the overall area the pond covers.
Greg's suggestion was that we install a silt pond in the creekbed that supplies the pond. We agreed to do this and hired an excellent grading guy to do the work. We did utilize some of my neighbor's 4500# concrete blocks to create the damn in the creekbed and then lined the blocks with some heavy duty rubber liner that's made for holding back water.
Greg also suggested that we add a (sp??) floc log to "settle" the ultra fine clay particulate.
My neighbor has been fully cooperative and has willingly covered the costs of all of this 100%.
It's now had several months to operate and while I would not say the pond is back to normal, its improved dramatically. The color is back to its normal deep green and the clarity is excellent. However, I should add that we've had precious little rain to really evaluate our progress. We'll see....
Yesterday I cleared leaves all day by the pond. I did not notice a single living thing in the pond. I also see a film of very fine particulate coving the bottom. Not sure if we had a fish kill or not.
BTW, I discussed dredging the pond with the guy who did the silt pond work for me. He suggested that the only way to do it would be to drain the pond completely, let it dry out and then put earth moving equipment in the pond. Seems like a pretty drastic set of actions...but I don't know. Is there any alternative to draining it?
Any suggestions on where to take this.
Last edited by bobframe; 12/15/12 02:35 PM.
