Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Not sure how to fix this pond.

I have a small, 1/2 acre pond which was old when I was young. It is spring fed, and never dries out, but it is also in a valley that can get a lot of water during rains. (Think 10-30 cfs, could be triple that in a gully washer.)

About 50, maybe 60, years ago the State put a highway through the middle of our property and the pond filled with mud. They cleaned it out, but shortly afterwords the dam washed out on one side. (The bottom is solid rock, and it washed down to a rock ledge on one side.) It was not a big deal at the time, as the pond still had 5-8' of water in it.

Now it is full of silt and only has about 1 foot of water, then muck that is at least 4 feet deep (I tried driving down a rod through the muck but I couldn't get to where I think it is the deepest.) The old dam is full of trees, and the down stream banks have filled in with trees and silt as well for at least 50 to 100 feet. To cut a drain would require cleaning out all the timber and a long ditch, complicated by who knows what boulders, rocks, channels in the old stream bed.

I'd like to clean it out, fix the break, and raise the water level about 3-5 feet so it can be seen from the house. Maybe restock the fish that were lost years ago.

How do you drain it? What is this likely to cost? Give me some clues on how to get started?

As much as you might like to recreate your youth vision of the pond, the more practical solution might be to let it be a nice wetland like it is and build a new pond adjacent to it. The cost is likely to be a lot less and you are starting with a clean slate where you can correct the problems of the original pond. One glaring one is excessive watershed. Build the new pond in such a manner on the side of a hill instead of the valley where the watershed size is known. The NRCS can help with pond size and recommended watershed. Too much watershed and the pond has excessive silt problems and large water flow requirements for the overflow system. Too little watershed and the pond gets too low from evaporation between rains and nutrient build up because of little flow through.

I know that does not answer your question, but having built several new ponds as well as cleaned out three old ones, new construction is the way to go. Cheaper, better and can be designed properly.

Just the way I personally would approach it.

Other than an artificial pond, filled from a well, I can't think of another area on my property to build a new pond that would have any advantage over this one. This is the "Ozarks", only one flat spot on the whole place, and that is where the house sits. Most of the land is second growth oak trees. (100+ years) The ravines are very steep and narrow. Limestone bedrock is just a few feet down everywhere, and springs and seeps abound. Some are amazingly high above the valley floor.

And, while nostalgia is obviously a factor, I'm actually wanting it different than it used to be. Lower than it used to be, but deeper than it is now. (I have talked with the rural fire district about using it as a water source for them. If it was cleaned out, and raised a few feet, it would have plenty of storage for them. But then I would have to build a gravel road to the fill pipe, and that is another expense.)

Silt influx is not the problem it once once, all the drainage areas, including the highway right of way, are now covered with grass or trees, and even during heavy rains the inflow is fairly clear, though it is not perfect by any means. I would guess the upstream watershed is 80 acres or so. Two homes were recently built upstream and they may have added a little silt to the flow. Hopefully that will go away once they are finished and landscaped. (7 inches of rain this week, 3" yesterday, and the pond is clear enough to see the bottom this morning.)

I have talked to a couple of "pond builders". One suggested moving the dam downstream 50 or 60 feet, but that was a $20K project.

Guess I probably should be finding a local expert/conservation department and try to get some independent advice from people who can look at the land. (Or should I post some pictures of the pond?)

Here are some factors for you to consider.

One acre, one foot deep, is 1667 cubic yards of dirt.

In order to remove silt, it has to be moved at least twice, maybe three times. Once to take it out, once to haul it off, and once to spread it at its final destination.

A "normal" dump truck hauls about 9 cubic yards of material.

With a half acre pond, excavating it down to get five feet of depth, expect to move around 4,000 cubic yards of material. That's a football field 2.5 feet deep. You'll need a place to put that dirt.

If you can raise the dam several feet, and excavate a couple of feet of material from the pond, that may be your best answer.

I think your smartest move is to quantify the amount of material that needs to be removed to get it like you want, then get some bids. Since you sit on top of rock, think about what it will take to keep the pond from leaking when finished.

Lots to think about before digging any dirt.

Where you are, with all the ravines, you could probably fill a nearby one with the pond sludge, and save a bunch on transportation. Pond sludge looks like and has the consistency of wet concrete when first pushed out. When my pond clean-out was done in August 2015, I had a place to put the sludge right below the lower side of the dam. It took almost a year to dry, and then we smoothed and spread it. It's all grassed over now, and no one would know it is pond sludge unless they knew all about the renovation. I estimate it was about 400 to 500 cubic yards of material for the clean-out of my 1/4 acre pond. We took about 5 feet of sludge out of the middle, and it became thinner toward the edges. We also took out all the trees around the pond, as it was almost completely ringed by them, and had thick brush also on the dam.

I had a huge burn pile in the winter of 2015-16.