Lamar --
Beautiful looking pond. But, you're right, it sure is brown.
One thing I would want to know is if the muddy water is the result of clay particles already in the pond that get stirred up with water flowing through, or is the muddy water the result of clay that is entering the pond with the runoff? I suspect it is both. If it is from inflow, you'll need to do more than treat the water with alum and quick lime.
I'm not at my home computer, so I don't have access to photographs of some of the things I've done. When we bought our present place about five years ago, our pond would be very muddy after even a small rain. That has been completely fixed. It now only gets muddy when the catfish are spawning and real active.
I spent a lot of time and effort stablizing the inflow. Some with grasses/wetland, some with slowing the water flow and adding settling ponds, and some with diversion.
My first task was to stabilize a barren field that drained about a 15 acre pasture. All the topsoil was gone. It had one erosion ravine that was about 3-foot deep. It fed directly into the pond. With straw bales, rocks, grading, more rocks and more straw bales I flattened the major run-off area from about six feet wide to about 20 feet wide. By widening it, I really slowed the water flow and erosion, and I got grasses to take hold. I diverted the flow into a low area behind the pond that has now become a wetland that stays wet about 10 months out of the year. The water that seeps into the pond from this area is now crystal clear. I did a simlar thing in two other areas that weren't quite as bad. Together, this was probably over 50% of the muddy inflow.
I had another place where water rushed in during storms. It is actually a creek several months out of the year that snakes through the woods. It drops about 100 feet vertically from a wet collection spot to where it finally enters the pond. I put in a culvert right at the entrance to the pond, added a lot of stone, then soil, and finally grass around and over the culvert. Behind the culvert I dug a settling pond that is about 10 foot diameter and two feet deep. The water enters and exits the settling pond through rock walls that trap a lot of leaves and other debris. Each year I clean out the silt and debris that has settled.
About 100 feet upstream from this settling pond, I dug a larger settling pond that is about 25-feet in diameter, and about six feet deep. It was in an area with a lot of erosion due to a steep drop. The spillway is rock lined, and is about 8-feet wide. This cut the erosion considerably. This little pond holds water most of the year, and is home to lots of amphibious critters, and provides water to a lot of furry critters. The water flowing towards the lower settling pond out of this one is now crystal clear. This pond collects a lot of debris.
Another problem area was the road to the pond that drains several acres. Water would flow down the dirt road, pulling lots of clay with it, and dumping it into the pond. Adding ditches on the side, and by adding a diversion ditch that now flows down the back side of the dam, has stopped all of that mud from flowing in.
Lastly, I don't mow down to the pond edge. I leave about a 12-24 inch buffer. I weed whack, and leave the grasses and weeds at least six inches high most of the way around the pond perimeter. This too traps a lot of stuff before it goes in the pond.
Anyway, good luck. It sounds like you've got a good plan. Keep us informed.
Ken
