I am appraising a roughly two-acre fishing pond that was dug in/adjacent to the Mojave River in San Bernardino County desert. The river flows underground in many places along its path. The property owner says when he created the pond, he dug down five feet and hit water. The pond is now about 12 feet deep. Soils are loamy sand.

Is a liner required for this size/type of pond?
Thank you
Nancy

I think if the river is effecting the pond, it is what is, and probably not much you can do about it.

Thank you for the response.
Let me ask the question in another way - are liners typically used in ponds in which the pond is fed by natural upwelling instead of piped in water?
Nancy

No. How is the upwelling water in the pond going to get past the liner? A liner is to contain what's in the pond, so you do have to have an external source for the water.

I do know of a number of gravel and sand pits around here that are spring fed and ground water fed that do not need liners.

A 40 acre property with a 24 acre sand pit sold for 990K a while back. I went to school with the guy who ran the sand operation and he sold it after he was done. You can now get 100' of frontage in a tiny lot with a cheaply built house. Lot sizes are 20,000 sq ft or so all on a BOW that has more Geese than Canada! Real bargain starting at 220k for some lumber and dirt. People are buying up these up tho.

Town has a Bar, a Grain Elevator and the 31 Bypass going right thru their front yard (Shhhh, they don't know it yet)

Thank you
On that 31 Bypass thing - here is an aside:
As a county appraiser, I appraise property required by the County and sometimes through the eminent domain process. If you own property, please keep abreast of what is planned for your community. I am often the first person to tell a property owner that the County wants their land, even when the plans were put in place years before. It's heart-wrenching, but interesting work.
Nancy

Yeah, I'll bet that is tough.

Ground water ponds are interesting. If you see 3 or 4 gravel pits next to each other, they will all have the same water level due to the porosity of the soils. If you pump water into one, you pump it into all of them and don't accomplish much on your specific water hole.

Considering your original question here, If the pond next to the river has a good runoff area feeding it, a liner would help it contain the water that would ordinarily leach into the river.

Some liners include flap valves that will allow air/water trapped under the liner to escape into the pond while sealing off any backflow. The proper liner could theoretically allow a lined pond's water level to rise during high ground water events, and maintain the higher level once groundwater lowers.

Dwight's Bremer Pond I believe is a pond near a river that fluctuates somewhat with the river level, in case you are interested of how a pond acts without a liner.

Thank you so much, everyone.

Liners appear to be a large part of the cost of the pond and I don't know if the pond in question has one. Therefore, I asked this question to determine a reasonable basis for an assumption I am making in the appraisal. By the way, for those of you new to appraisal, assumptions are allowed, but they have to be identified in the appraisal report with the caveat that it might affect the results of the appraisal. In other words, if I assume that the pond does NOT have a liner, I have to so state and indicate that if it is discovered later that there is a liner, the cost would be different.

By the way - I am going to be posting some info later this weekend on pond value that I've found. Look for that and then tell your appraisers to consider it when valuing your pond in the future.
Nancy