Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam My new house

I'm getting ready to move into my new house, with a pretty big creek. They layout looks just right for a pond. I need to know if it is legal to build my own dam to re-route the creek, and if I did how should I go about doing it. Any information will help.

Thanks,
Cory

I would also like to know how much a dam would cost to build.

Water rights can be pretty tricky? Where do you live? Do you own both sides of the creek?

One rule, which I believe is standard everywhere, is that changes you make to your property cannot affect where water leaves the property. In other words, your pond discharge must exit your property the same place the water drained of before the pond was there.

If you are considering damming a permanent stream, it could be considered a "navigable waterway" by the Army Corps of Engineers, due to proximity to larger rivers. They can be pretty sticky if you want to put a dam on it. There was a thread a week or two ago which discussed the navigable waterway permission problem - you should do a search for it and read it.

All I can add here is to advise you NOT to even talk to the ACoE. You'll never have a pond if you do. It's like the David Spade commercial on TV. The answer is always NO!

We tend to think of ponds in terms of property rights. Everyone else thinks of them in terms of WATER. Water is serious, serious business to everyone. Towns, businesses and agriculture can't live and grow without it. There are lots of horror stories of people doing things on their own and living to regret it.