Here is the normally very small trickle and sometimes dry creek that runs near the lower side of our property. A pond would quickly fill with gravel, silt, etc.
https://youtu.be/rgO-66eA80g John -- thank you for posting that.
We had an unusual winter and spring in my part of West Virginia.
The overflow from our ponds form small seasonal trickling streams. Our ponds are not fed from streams.
When my wife and I came home a few weeks ago after being away for several months as "snow birds", all of our ponds were at full-pool. We have gotten some big rains since we returned home a few weeks ago. Lots of leaves washed into all of the ponds. The primary drain of the largest and lowest pond got clogged with brush and leaves.
Over the last couple of weeks we got a lot more rain and a lot more leaves washing into our ponds. By mid-week last week, the water in our main and lowest pond was 18-24 inches above the top of the clogged stand-pipe drain. That put the pond water level where it was just entering the leaf-filled emergency overflow.
I began to get quite concerned. I didn't have an easy and safe way of clearing the primary drain on our main pond. It was too deep to go out in chest waders, and I didn't feel safe using my canoe or kayak due to the water velocity, temperature and wind gusts. The weather forecasts were very disturbing -- lots of rain coming.
That afternoon, I used my tractor to clean out the emergency spillway on my lowest pond. Water immediately began to flow through it. The emergency overflow bottom is about 36 inches below the top of the dam, and about 18 inches above our stand-pipe overflow.
I don't know how much rain we got overnight, but it was multiple inches. At sun up, I could hear significant water flowing somewhere. I walked to that emergency overflow and found about 18-24 inches of water in the spillway, which is about 5-foot wide at the bottom, and at least 8-foot wide at about 36 inches above the bottom of the spillway.
The water flowing out of the emergency overflow was deafening as it cascaded over the rocks to the bottom of our mountain hollow on its way through small creeks that eventually feed into the Cacapon River. I doubt I could have survived, with or without a life vest, had I slipped into that emergency overflow.
My ponds are only filled with runoff through heavy hardwood forest and about a 20-30 acre pasture. They are the "headwaters" of several small seasonal streams. There are many ponds below mine, that are fed from water starting above my property. I don't know what happened to them.
In conclusion, I can only say that using a small seasonal stream to feed a pond can be extremely dangerous without a lot of safety considerations.
Stay safe,
Ken
