I have a 3 acre pond dug two years ago with about 600' of berm/dam built around half of it. The berm/dam was built from red clay placed by large earth haulers and spread with a sheeps-foot dozer so compaction shouldn't be an issue. They are 15-50' wide at the base and 10' wide at the top and range from 3-15' tall. Unfortunately I have greater than a 3 to 1 slope in the interior of the pond.

Last year the pond was still filling and was 8' from the top, with only some minor seepage (< 5 gal/day) in one small spot.

This year with large snow fall and spring rain it filled up rather quickly (so glad I put plenty of overflow pipes in). Now it appears that I have seepage in about 20 places but still only loosing relatively minor amounts (~2000 gallons day) and no noticeable water level drops. Even after a week of no rain (and no springs feed the pond) I only had about a 1/4 inch of loss which I would attribute most to evaporation.

I understand some seepage is common in new clay dams. How long is "normal" for seepage to occur?

Since it is not eroding the dam, should I have any concerns about a catastrophic failure? I really don't want to send 10 million gallons of water towards my neighbors property.

Thanks in advance,
Art