That was my original point. Why renovate the pond and not fix the dam? However, everyone's opinion has been to leave the dam alone because of the cost and difficulty of replacing the entire thing. It is over 500' long and about 20 feet high with a heavily forested 2:1 slope on the back and dense woods directly behind and to add insult to injury, the dam is on my property line too.
Getting to and fixing the dam would cost five times what the renovation is going to cost. It is simply not in the budget.
I will definitely ask him about adding dirt to the front and see if that is possible. We were not planning on doing a complete drain though, so the access will be limited to whatever remains above the water line after we drain it down to just below the channel level.
