Well, the dam inspection didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped. The former NRCS guy pulled some old photographs and found one dated 1960 with the lake there, so it's at least 44 years old.
He said that the dam wasn't going to break tomorrow, but there were some issues that need to be addressed down the road. There are a few seepages through the dam, one being somewhat concerning due to a fox/armadillo hole.
He also said that the trees on the dam should be removed and the dam re-worked a bit to take care of the cavities from the tree roots.
To do all this, he thought the lake would need to be drawn down approximately 10'.
As this is all visual inspection, it's going to be tough to get even a ballpark cost so that I can determine if it's something that I'm willing to tackle, and he wasn't too keen on even picking a number, but when I asked "Are we looking at $10k...$50k...what?", he responded with "Probably more than $10k but not $50k".
That doesn't help.
