Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Muddy water sedimentation from logging

Hello, I am new here and am also a new pond owner. I have owned my pond for 4 years. It is a 1/2 acre pond somewhere around 45 years old. I was told 8 feet deep at the deepest when built. It is fed mostly by run off. There is no farmland above it. Only uninhabited mountain ground. There is about 1/2 to 2 feet of muck on bottom. No major weed infestation yet. This was going to be the summer we were going to start making some improvements. This spring they started logging the property above us which is where all of the run off comes from for our pond. We now have a severe sedimentation problem which I am trying to work out with the owners of the other property. My question is what effects (short and long term) can I expect to see from this sedimentation. It has changed the whole color of the water and it never seems to clear up. There is a lot of FA there that I don't believe was there before. Thanks for any replies

As you are doing your renovations, if you have the area available and the resources, seriously consider building a 1/20th or 1/10th acre sediment pond above your existing pond. Or even smaller if it can easily be accessed for clean out by a backhoe once every five or ten years.

My sediment pond thread

One other possibility. I doubt if you can get any satisfaction from the logging company. But you never know, they might actually want to be good neighbors. If you let them know in a nice way the problems they are causing you they might even be happy to offer some clean out services of a trackhoe if they happen to have one that is not busy.

Not likely, but it never hurts to ask.

I recently talked to a neighbor with a pond that I have watched for years rarely fill to full pool because it was built with almost no watershed. We always had a minor problem with the end of the field (adjacent to her pond) washing the end because the water would stop at the fence line and run down it to its exit point. After thinking about both our problems for a number of years (should have done it long ago) I called her and suggested she let me take my bulldozer, take out a small section of fence line. Build a short terrace on my land and divert it into her pond. Win-win. We get rid of about 4 acres of water that otherwise just runs down the the end of the field and makes a low area extra wet when it is wet already, and she now has a full pond that only gets full in the past maybe once every 5 years in excessively wet year.

So sometimes neighbors can be good neighbors. Never know till you ask.

Of course you could also go about it the nasty way and threaten to sue or turn them in to some government agency, but that rarely works out well for anyone involved.

Edit: Oops! just re-read your post and realized you already are trying to work it out with the neighboring property.

Thank you for the reply. I am thinking about a sediment pond as one of the remedies. So far all the talks between my neighbor and I have been good. He has said he will "make it right". I can only hope that he is sincere. My concern though is the erosion is going to continue for some time (maybe a year) until they have replanted all the disturbed areas. So my question is what, if any, detrimental effects (besides more sediment in my pond) can I expect from this suspended sediment if it remains that way for 6 months to a year. I may be overly concerned and I hope I am but I believe I am already seeing more filamentous algae than I had before. I am new to this pond business so I just don't know what to expect. If it is just going to be muddy water then that is ok but if it is going to be excessive algae growth and or other things I would like to take a pro active approach. Thanks again