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#232448 08/26/10 05:44 PM
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Hi all, nice forum and glad to be here.

I've read through a good many threads and posts here about leaky lake levees. I see alot about Bentonite clay and Pondseal. Obviously both do a good job. I haven't been able to find much about pond liners, ie the large rolls of heavy mill such as the 10 X 50 and even the 15 X 100 rolls. I'm assuming by the lack of mention here in relation to the other methods that this might not work as well. I just wanted to see if anyone has had success with using the heavy pond liners to stop a leveee from leaking.

I also see a lot of info about applying large amounts of clay to the front of levees to stop them from leaking, but I can't find anything about digging a small core ditch from the top of the levee down, and packing it with Bentonite or similar products to stop a leaky levee. I'm referring to a fairly small ditch, such as 25 long and maybe 2 feet wide. I wondered if you could blend clay soil with leak sealing clay like Bentonite with success.

Am just curious to get some feedback and ideas and experience from these methods.

Thanks again.

BillLake

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Hi BillLake! Welcome, we're glad you found us!

There are a few lined pond owners, but liners are normally only used if you can't get or don't have good clay available. Worthwhile liners are made of rubber to pond size and are a minimum of 40 mil thick.

The cost of a liner is pretty high and is usually more to install than reworking your dam would cost. Plus it is unlikely you could just line your dam successfully...the water would just run under the liner if you have a leak already.

If you have good clay available at your pond site, a core trench is not absolutely required. You can line the water side face of the dam and the main pool area with about a 1 foot thick layer of well COMPACTED clay in 6 inch lifts, per 7 feet of depth....Use a 2 foot minimum thickness on the dam face and bottom though. The cost of this, including re-stocking, will often be far less than the price of a liner alone.

You may want to contact your county NRCS agent at your USDA office. Most are great people and the service is free. They can often give you some invaluable help. Asked quietly, most will suggest qualified builders (My NRCS agent even supervised the 58 hours worth of repairs on my pond)



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Thanks Rainman. Before I built this lake around 1993 I had a soil scientist come and test the ground and we had a tractor and augered a lot of test holes all around the general perimeter and in the proposed lake bed itself, to see what the soil composition was. All of it was excellent. No one suspected any problem with the good clay soil we hit everywhere, and one hill over is another lake with the same clay soil and it's held water like a rain barrell since 1942. No one had any concerns about the quality of the clay soil I would be using. And this includes the local federal government agencies that help design and build lakes.

To fast forward, a few years later I raised the levee (we had a more than adequate core ditch and we roughed up the new levee, knocked the top off, etc to have a textbook foundation to add to.) I've had the levee tested and had other experts out to check things and they did more boring, this time on the levee and found an area that was moist and was of the soil composition to allow water to seep through. I believe they called it "moving material" through the levee. I'm guessing the previous contractor hit a pocket of sand and small sandstone and a little of that got hauled in for the levee and that is the root cause of the leak.

In 2008 I drained the lake completely. We plated the front with 4 feet of top quality clay soil and the whole levee got at least 2 feet of it all down the front side. The suspected problem area got 4 feet and it was packed well. I pumped the lake back up later that winter and into the next spring and by the end of the summer it had seeped back down to the original level. I pumped it up again this past winter and now it's dropped about 6-8 feet again. It seems to drop about 15-24 inches per month, and more in the hot dry late summer. It hits a certain point and then seems to stop draining and then the water level stabilizes. The deepest part of the lake is right off the levee where my depth finder shows it to be 27 feet deep. Without getting into a lot calculations and speculations, there's a big head of water pressure on the levee and I'm sure it has one heck of a static line angling down through it. But the suspected leaky area is not there. It's away from the deep part where the head pressure should be the greatest, and is back toward the other end of the levee. We've pretty much eliminted the leak being near the center of the levee. The back side is dry there with no visible surface moisture.

I'm runnnig out of options, so now I'm considering Bentonite and/or Pondseal, and the pond liner. I thought about getting a track hoe that can reach down 12-15 feet to dig a core from the top of the levee in the area where the sand was found last time. We could trench down the levee and if we do hit sand, then we could dig it all out and replace with good clay soil and maybe even a mix of Bentonite and/or Pondseal clay to go with it. I think I figured that such a cut of around 75 feet, 3-4 feet wide, and 12-15 feet deep shouldn't need but about 500 yards of clay-dirt to fill and pack. But I think we could isolate it down to an area about 15-25 feet.

If the trouble is not in this suspect area that is about 50-75' long, then I don't know where else to look. The backside of the levee in this location was always wet and willows sprouted and grew here and no place else. I'd have to send pictures to explain, but suffice it to say that I can pretty well narrow it down to this 50-75 foot section, as did the soil scientist who bored the test holes on the levee, and the others that came out to examine and assess the levee.

The pond liner idea came up recently when I was searching for ways to fix a leaky pond. Believe me, I've tried all the routine things and this has been going on to one degree or another, since it was built in the 1990s. The pond liner is around $700, and that is the one listed as 15 x 100 and 45 mil thick. I thought that would be a big enough overlap, and since the lake is down about 8 feet now that I could add that to the front regardless. But if I do I'd have to forego the Bentonite and/or Pondseal on the front-water side of the levee or either mix it in and wet it and let it set and then add the pond liner on top later.

We've run out of the easy things do to, and really the hard things too. I probably added 5,000 yards of dirt to the levee in the 2008 construction and I can't tell that it improved one thing.

So...I'm branching out on the internet now to see if someone has an idea we've overlooked. In the next year or two I've got to either fix it or just learn to live with the level it drains to and stays at. We're convinced there is no sink hole in the lake bed because it drains to a certain point and stops. It's there now, and that's why I want to do something now while we can see everything and have the water low enough to get to work. The question is...but what work to do? The only thing I haven't tried is making a cut down the levee and packing it with top quality material, maybe even bentonite, or add Bentonite to the front side, and maybe add a a pond liner on top of that.

Any further suggestions will be appreciated.

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Bill, are you saying the lake drops back to the original level before you raised your levee? If so, I would first suspect your clay borrow area for raising the dam as being too wet to be compacted properly if the area was from the normal pool area. Don't just check near your dam for moist areas, check several hundred yards beyond also.

Evaporation can lower the lake by an inch per day...well within the 24 inches per month range.

Does this have a drain pipe going through the base of the dam? What is your primary spillway?

I too had my levee raised 3 feet and my borrow area leaked into the hillside under the full pool level....the dam could be leaking also where the new clay ws added if it was not properly tied into the existing good clay.

Even at a 27 foot depth (same as my pond), you'd be surprised how little the PSI rating is.

It sounds like the dam and lake was well thought out and constructed, but the best clay in the world can't seal unless properly compacted...A Sheepsfoot compacter is best, sheepsfoot roller next best along with earthmovers....dozer tracks are some of the worst compactors.

I hope I gave you some new things to look for. And by all means POST PICS....We LOVE 'em!



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Thanks Rainman. Yes, in general terms I would say it drains back to approximately the water level of the previous levee before I added on. We discussed this a lot and really bladed that levee off good, several feet all over, to make it match and seal back.

Briefly, I used to have a black plastic pipe for my spillway. I don't have much watershed and the lake has never run over. When I raised the levee I capped that pipe off, wadded some towels into it and filled a few feet of it with concrete, then formed up the area around it and poured a concrete slab over it.

When we did the work in 2008 we cleaned off the back side of the levee and the only wet places were on the back side where the suspected leak is. That's where the willow trees grew fast too. We all checked it good, and there was none, and is no, sign of seepage from the black spillway pipe.

I see you think like me on lake construction. The best management tool is a drain pipe and valve to draw it down to work on, and yes I have one. When we put it in we used rubber seep collars as recommended and also poured concerte seep collars for extra security. During the 2008 construction we checked the drain pipe often and never saw any sign of seepage there.

Over a decade ago I added a 3 inch well so I could fill it up since the watershed wasn't big enough. This early summer was a good example of the seepage. I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of gallons of water that pipe pushes out in an hour, but it's a lot. Could probably fill a good size swimming pool every hour. I watched the lake and water levels close this early summer. I'd run the pump one day, and two days later the lake would drop back to the previous level. That's the equivcilent of 24 hours of that well running full blast in lost water due to a leak somewhere. A tremendous volume of water is moving out every day through that levee somewhere.

We didn't use a sheepsfoot compactor, just the dozer, which as you say isn't all that great.

Re your comment on evaporation, that's not the problem. The main lake one hill over may drop two feet in Aug-Sept, but it's a pretty tight levee. One big rain and it's full again and stays full. The leaky lake looks like it's just sucking it out till it drops about 6-8 feet, then seems to level off. This levee has baffled all of us.

I thought about the guess of a minimum of 15 inches per month drop, but that's off. I notice 1-4 inches a day, with 2-3 being the average drop per day, in the early summer. Sometimes it seems to level off a few days, then there it goes again. I can see the water lines on the levee, and it seems to drop and stop, drop and stop. But I don't think it's ever dropped 3-4 feet in a month. Two feet, or maybe more, seems to be about the pace. Just a horseback opinion, but I'm quite sure it doesn't drop 3-4 feet a month. I know the inches per day won't match with that, but again it seems to be intermittent. Last August it seemed to level off and I thought it had sealed up. In a few weeks it was dropping again.

This is my first day here. I'll see if I can learn to post pictures. I took about 35 today. I can send you a ton of them if you have a way to PM me your email.

Thanks for the time, consideration, and knowledge of your reply.



Last edited by BillLake; 08/27/10 12:19 AM. Reason: mis-spelling and typos
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I read through that tutorial and have gone through the process three times, uploading pictures. Nothing ever shows up and I can't even get the preview to work. I may try to upload the pictures to another account and post the link here. I'm getting no where with this.

<Edit> The pictures are at this link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomatodon/sets/72157624817825264/

Last edited by BillLake; 08/27/10 05:23 PM.
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Very picturesque setting Bill...I see why you're so bummed!

Couple more questions that might help;

Did your builder work the soil in the ENTIRE pool area originally. Did he work the NEW shorline when the levee was raised?

You said you found sand/gravel in the levee that came from the pool area. This means you had drainage seams in your soil. These seams could be anywhere and if the new, higher shoreline was not worked/compacted, more seams could be draining your lake into the watertable. These seams could be running in any direction.

You might want to do a telephone consult with Mike Oto, co-owner and dirt Guru extraordinair of Pond Boss ottosdirtservice.com

Considering the expenses you have already laid out along with the frustration of time, effort, and the extreme difficulty of finding a leak....I would suggest letting the pond leak to it's lowest point, then draining it a few more feet and allowing it to dry a few weeks. After the exposed shoreline is dry enough, get the heavy equipment in there to work the exposed shoreline and use a sheepsfoot roller to compact the entire shoreline and dam face to seal the entire lake.

It won't be cheap, but wherever the leak is, it will be at or above the low draining point and this solution will fix it.


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You can click on my screen name to send me a private message or my website to get my phone number.



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Thanks Rainman. The sand-small sandstone area that we believe the seepy material came from was not in the lake bed, but it was past the north end of the levee up the hill a short way. It was the closest and most convenient location and none of us suspected it being sandy. They didn't work there long till they saw the sand and have hauled some of it to the levee. I have pictures of that I can post later today.

As for letting it do a slow and natural drain, that's basically what I've decided to do. I haven't touched it since May and decided to let it seep all summer and that it would find it's natural leveling off point by August, September at the latest. It's probably there now.

All you think it needs is the sheepsfoot roller over the whole thing? Should I add Bentonite/Pondseal first? Or just use the shepsfoot roller on the clay soil I already have?

I'll see if I can post more later today. Thanks for the reply and I look forward to anything any one else has to offer.

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If you can get bentonite, till it in at proper proportions to a minimum 12 inch depth, moisten and then compact.

Just be sure to tie the new repairs in to the lower level clay or the water could continue to leak under the repairs.

It would be a great time to add stucture, shelves, ditches or any other contour changes you might like.

Benotonite expands and contracts a great deal and is most effective when it remains compacted and under water. Drying out will make it shrink considerably and could create cracks that leak badly, so proper mixing with other soils is critcal.

Last edited by Rainman; 08/27/10 10:56 AM.


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Thanks Rainman. I added photos of the sandy area used briefly in getting material for the levee. This is a small spot past the north end, and opposite the lake basin.

Because the lake was so hard to keep full I chose not to disturb the lake bed wth ditches, etc. We pushed up a few fingers from the bank into the lake, formed a few small submerged humps, and bulldozed in some big trees and brushpiles that are submerged, but I didn't want to disturb the lake bed except for the basic essentials. I hauled in several dump truck loads of gravel for the bluegull to spawn on, and that's about it other than a few brush piles.

I've never used a sheepsfoot and know nothing about them. I see the big ones used in road construction, but what is a good size for this project and what is needed to pull it? And what is needed to pull a disk? I'm a bit gunshy on equipment around the levee. When we raised the levee several years ago a guy flipped a $60,000 dump truck on the back side by being careless and thankfully no one was seriously hurt. In 2008 the dozer operator hit a slick spot and sailed his $80,000 dozer into the lake going downhill, but thankfully he was working by one of the coves as the lake was half drained and the dozer mired down before getting any deeper in water than the top of the dozer tracks. Again, thankfully we got it winched out and water didn't get into the motor but he spent quite a bit flushing out and changing oil, grease, hydraulics, and so on.

I can drain it down more, but working on such a slope could still cause the equipment to break through to some slick mud and slide the whole thing into the lake. I can't drain it dry because I re-stocked it in the late winter of 2009.

With safety as the first consideration, what are some good options for small equipment on the front-water side of the levee? We're never going to disk it 12" deep, but the same thing could be done with a dozer just roughing up the face of the levee and blading it down. Then we could apply the Bentonite-Pondseal and let him track it in pulling a sheepsfoot. I don't know if any speed is needed to make the sheepsfoot work any better, and I really don't know what kind of equipment I'll need for such a project, or the rental-operator cost.

If we did this, would it help to let it get a few rains and set up and then overlay it with some 15' wide x 100'long X 45 mil thick Firestone pond liner?

If a dozer can pull a sheepsfoot effectively I would think they could work the levee in a day's time. What is an average price for a sheepsfoot rental?

Thanks again. The saga continues. Hopefully this time I'll fix it.

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This is what I intend to rent after I regain legal access to my property.

http://www.rentrain.com/actionequipment/product.php?id=59295



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Bill,

It is my understanding that the liner will not help you in this situation. The water will naturally seek it's own level, seeping under and around the liner. I am no expert though.

What I know for sure is that you have a great looking lake when it is full and can certainly understand your frustration as you try to keep it there. Otto should be able to give you a real good second opinion. If I wasn't two thousand miles away from him he'd be building ours. He is in your back yard by Texas standards - give him a ring.

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Originally Posted By: Rainman
This is what I intend to rent after I regain legal access to my property.

http://www.rentrain.com/actionequipment/product.php?id=59295


With all the stuff that's been going on there, will you have anything to go to once the legal battle is settled?


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When the addition was made the contractor used a trackhoe and dump truck to get soil for the levee, then they would dump it and spread and pack it with a bulldozer. I always wondered if this had the same compaction as hauling and working it in with a dirt pan.

I marked the water level today and will watch it a while to see if its still seeping down.

Even if water can move somewhat under a pond liner, it still seems like it would have a major impact on any movement and make the water find another and longer, more difficult route to seep through. At the very least it seems that a pond liner would slow it down a great deal, if not stop it completely. Plus, it's the cheapest option now, and I've tried most everything else.

Am hoping to hear from some of you who have used a big pond liner to fix a leaky levee.

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Billlake,

I have not used liners very much at all. Good clay is usually easier to find and cheaper in the Southeast. From my experience, I would think you would need to cover most if not all of the pond bottom to keep water from seeping @ the liner. Otherwise you would have to deep trench @ the entire leak area to bury the edges of the liner, backfilling with good clay. Seems like bentonite would be easier in that application. Bentonite seems to work better in isolated and easily identified leaks than it does over broad areas. The dump truck/dozer method of raising the levee is very suspect in my opinion. Hard to get good compaction in my experience, even with good clay and proper soil moisture. If you have high quality clay for core material, you may want to cut a "V" shaped trench down to a foot or so into the old levee and come all the way up with a core. This may have to be done over the entire length.

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I've done quite a bit of research on ways to seal in general, and also a lot of on-site examination. Also had a good contractor meet to look over the situation.

I calculated that the pump I use pours in around 85,000 gallons of water a day. They water level rise varies as it fills, but 2-4 inches a day is a fair guess. With the pump off, the water level drops about half that fast in the beginning. So, that's conservatively 30,000 - 40,000 of water a day the lake loses. We've mowed the levee again and there is no sign of water seepage anywhere behind the levee or in the drainage ditch. I plated the front of the dam with 2-4 feet of good clay soil in 2008. In 2009 and 2010, I can't tell it has slowed the leak at all. Therefore, for now we've eliminated the levee itself as a likely spot for the leak.

I've walked a lot of shoreline back and forth and we've used a post hole digger and a metal probe. What surprised us, and especially me (since I've known that land pretty well for years), is that the far side of the shore, opposite the levee, it as solid as can be expected from the main point and running on the northeast side of the southern cove all the way to the back. We did a lot of probing and it hits solid ground a few inches down. We never did hit a pure sand pocket.

However, on the southeast shoreline of the north cove, we could push the probe out of site. It appears that a vein or layer or strata of sand runs through that hill and on into the hollow where the water backs up. We could pull back from the shore and go up hill a bit and dig with a post hole digger and within seconds it would start filling with water once we were deep enough to be at the elevation of the current lake level. There was a band at least 15 feet wide and 200 or more feet long where we hit this kind of sand.

The contractor thinks we need to get a big track hoe and start digging on the north east edge of the cover which runs to the levee. We probed that shore for 200 or more feet also and usually hit solid clay within 6-12 inches. Rarely did we push the probe easily its full length like we did on the other side.

The water may be seeping into the sandy hill and re-routing under the lake or into a sand strata that gets into the hill adjoining the levee and then stay underground from then on. He feels that a good core ditch there will stop it. And it may. But I think we need to run a core ditch, or maybe even better, plate the sandy hillside with 1-2 feet of good clay soil. The more we investigate, the more I'm convinved we need to treat both shorelines of that cove in order to 1) stop water from seeping into the sandy hillside and re-routing itself underground by plating it solid with good clay soil 2) stop any seepage into the other (opposite) hillside that runs into the levee with a core ditch and more clay plating.

This particularly sandy hillside is hard to walk to, and it's fairly steep, and it's also on the far side that can't be mowed, so none of us ever suspected it, nor saw any evidence of, this amount of sand. All other areas had been tested fairly well and eliminated as the source of the leak.

I think this is going to be far beyond reinforcing the levee anymore. Now we're looking at plating up to 400 feet long and maybe 20 feet wide on both shores.

This is the latest on the saga of the leaky lake. We're hoping to investigate more for now to see how much we need to treat, but also have plans to start work around October 1 once I drop the water about 3 more feet with my drain pipe and give it some time to dry.

Still hoping for more ideas, if any of you would like to comment.

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I agree with your idea of lining the hillside with compacted clay.

I've already suggested this, but given the expense and frustrations you have had, I would line the entire pond with a foot of compacted clay and be done with the worries. I don't recall you ever saying how large your pond is. If you have good clay in the sandy hillside, you could borrow there and rework that hill along the shoreline and make damn sure you seal that sand seam also.

You may have seams in the bottom of the pond basin, especially in that old creek bed that is leaking as well---it's quite common.

Get'r sealed then you can spend your future pond $'s on the fish I'll be happy to bring to ya! grin

Which ever way you go, I sure hope it seals for you!



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Thanks Rainman,

The lake looks the same size as the 10-12 acre lake I have in the next hollow. It appears that way standing in the center of the levee of both lakes, from a boat, from an airplane, and from aerial photographs. However the perlimiter measurements and soil agency figures state it is only about 5 acres. I've always doubted that number, especially since flying over it in 2009 and seeing aerial photographs.

I talked to the contractor again today and we agree that a good core ditch 4 feet wide with good clay soil will seal it. It would seal it even more to plate it with good clay on top of that at least 10 feet wide from the maximum water line to the elevation where it stops seeping down to. Now I'm just hoping we can get enough quality clay soil close by. I won't really know for sure until we get the dozer there and start scraping off the pasture grass and see what the composition is. Otherwise we'll have to make some fairly long hauls to get enought dirt.

Thanks again for the interest and suggestions. I'll keep you posted.

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10-12 acres makes lininig the whole thing pretty impractical...lol

I hope you take lots of pictures of the work and post them on a new construction thread for future referance.



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I don't know if this will help or not but....

The NCRS agent a county over uses this to help keep water in ponds that are dug into sandy soil. I think it might be applicable in your case as well.

He recommended digging down as deep as was safe, all the way around the pond. Then drop a thick sheet of visqueen vertically into the trench, from top to bottom. Carefully back fill the trench. Any place where the visqueed overlapped another sheet, he recommended using roofing mastic to glue them together. Using this method, he eliminated 99% of the water that was escaping out the sides of the ponds thru the porous ground. I'm thinking you could use pond liner in place of the visqueen if enough clay wasn't available.


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How long would Visqueen last if sealed underground and in contact with constant moisture, and how could I contact this agent?

Thanks for the suggestion.

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Bill, I don't know. The agent worked in the Porter County, Indiana office. Unfortunately, he retired 2 years ago. I don't know if his replacement is as good as he was.

Comparing the Porter County office to the Starke County office was like comparing a Rolls Royce to a VW Beetle. Porter would come out, do a core sample, and give on-site monitoring of the build, etc. Starke county came out looked at the ground and said "I'd clear out the trees in the woods and move the pond back there." They didn't have a soil corer for testing, etc., etc.

Porter County
Valparaiso Service Center
3001 LEONARD DR., #104
Valparaiso, IN 46383-2733
Phone: 219-462-7515 Ext. 3
Fax: 219-548-9298
Name Title Email Address
Bill Moran District Conservationist bill.moran@in.usda.gov


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3/4 to 1 1/4 ac pond LMB, SMB, PS, BG, RES, CC, YP, Bardello BG, (RBT & Blue Tilapia - seasonal).
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That reminds me of another weird thing about this. Before I built the original levee around 1993 they sent a good soil guy to look at this site and we did test holes all around the area flagged that would be the water line at the shore, and also from down inside what would be the lake bed. This sandy hill was outside the original water line and the slope was too much to drive a tractor on it, so we never really thought much about this particular area.


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