Hello all! A neighbor has a pond in his yard that has been there for years. It's manicured all the way around it. Well, it recently started leaking and is now down very low. What is the best way to locate the leak? I assume that a wet spot on the back of the dam does not exactly mean that is where the leak is. I thought of uprooting all the grass along the backside of the dam. Could this help, or is it more trouble than it's worth?

What should I do?

Years, Huh? Has anything changed?

BTW, where are you? It matters.

Yeah, it's an old pond. Located in Alabama. There is one willow tree growing in a corner, but the water level has dropped below that already.

If it has been there for years and hasn't leaked, then something has obviously changed. It might well be that a willow root has penetrated sandy loam and has now found sand. Sand is an aquifer that transports or holds water. I've seen that happen.

There is also the chance that some sort of shallow underground spring has been tapped and is drawing off the water. This assumes that a spring has an outlet in the pond that has turned into an inlet.

The wet spot is certainly the biggest indicator. However, it could be and probably is leaking elsewhere and exiting there. You could also have other external factors like tunneling varmits.

The bottom line is that no 2 of these are ever the same and, until it dries up, you really won't know. I suspect the tree roots but it won't help to cut down the tree. The roots will just rot and leave a void. Tearing out the back of the dam will not fix the problem. Until it stops leaking you have no way of finding the leak source and I doubt, barring beavers or muskrats, that it is the dam. I personally know only one person, Meadowlark, who has fixed a leak from the backside of the dam.