I am about to excavate a leaking and silted in impoundment type pond and line it with clay. It’s about 160 ft long and 50 ft wide, with some steep sides, big rocks jutting into it, and will end up being about 12-14 ft deep at the deepest point. The impoundment is our driveway that crosses an intermittent stream. When the road was built up to go across this wash, it was not constructed to be a dam –the sandy rocky dirt was piled up and compacted and a concrete Texas crossing put on top. Later when we decided we wanted a pond (and we needed more fill to backfill around our new house) we excavated it out down to bedrock. It filled up the following spring and then leaked bigtime. After a major gullywasher that almost took out the road, it silted in with several feet of muck and the sedimentation galleries we built upstream filled in and toppled. It’s continued to leak of course, and so now I have the opportunity (ie, have the money) to rebuild the galleries, excavate it out and line it with clay (a liner would not be feasible since I have no way to keep water from getting in underneath it from upstream without major engineering).

Since I live in Colorado and this pond fills with the spring run off, will it be a problem for the clay to sit “exposed” until spring?
Also, I have read on this website that the depth of clay should be about 12” deep –is that before it’s compacted or after?

This year we had spawning bass and bluegills, shiners and then trout that got to over 4 lbs., all happy with freshwater shrimp filled elodea. I know I can have a great living pond, if I can just keep the water there! I augment it with a solar powered pump from a well, but don’t get enough water out of this well (about 6 gal./min when it’s sunny) to fill the pond very quickly. So I figured that I would get to work on it before the ground freezes and the gully fills with snow, but now I’m worried that the clay will crack or something . And I’ll still have a leaking pond!
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks. Barbara