Glen,
This post is tailor made for Mike Otto. Hopefully he'll add his comments. Using USDA Ag Handbook 590 as my source, ponds are either excavated or impounded. In my case, the land is flat, no chance of building a dam to contain water. Therefore, my pond needed to be excavated using a tracked excavator, dozer and two 10 wheel dump trucks. Fortunately, all the spoils were dumped within 50 yards of the pond so trucking distance was kept to a minimum. This opeartion presented a certain cost schedule. Match this against having to just install a dam and I think you begin to see where cost differences can add up. This just scratches the surface but hopefully it helps.
Russ
