Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Selecting a site Pond Site Suggestions - Working with NRCS?

This is my first post. I've been reading on this forum and appreciate the wisdom and experience that others have been willing to share.

I recently purchased 100+ acres of undeveloped land in central Alabama. Below is a topo of the property.




There are two creeks and two year-round springs - the springs originate from the hillside and flow into the creeks. The springs aren't big volume but each would likely fill a pond given enough time.

Before we do any development I want to develop an overall plan for the property. I would like to build a recreational pond/lake for my family if possible. My grandfather owned a 7 acre natural lake in Michigan, and when I was growing up that was my favorite place in the world. My goal is not so much a world-class fishing pond as it is a peaceful recreational lake that the kids can also fish in. If I build a pond I want to do it right, but with eight children at home I need to be careful with our expenses.

My first step is to see if we have one or more suitable sites. There are lots of ponds in the area and the county extension agent said the soil was typically good clay for ponds.

I have an appointment on Monday (12/4) to meet a local NRCS representative at the property. Any suggestions on how to get the most out of this NRCS site visit? Or other suggestions?

Thanks.

Welcome Tim and glad you posted. I suggest you look at all the info/links on this link from the archives.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000207;p=1#000000

Hey Tim...dam (oops) glad you're here!
I spent countless hours staring at topo maps over the last 4 or 5 years...up until about 18 months ago when I finally bought the property that a topo map represented. I must confess that I still get excited when I see one with alot of grade lines, particularly when they come together to form a potential pondsite.
Your draw to the left side (west?) is the one that would have me pouring another cup of coffee. The drawback (oops again) is the amount of drainage you have going into that draw. Presumably that dotted line is your primitive road access to the 2 deluxe building sites...? If would be way cool to back up that draw with a dam about 2/3 of the way down to the bottomland with the water backing up to just short of the road as it dips between the summits. Oh yeah, baby...can ya see the cabin or home built into the side of the hill of one summit with enough trees cleared to view the new pond?...walkout basement with windows looking out?
OK, OK....back to reality.
As noted, your feedstock of water will be near the top of necessary construction criteria. The spring you note can be good and bad...they can reverse and drain. If the spring is considerably higher up the hill and within the pond so that the head pressure of full pool is minimized, it will be helpful. How far up the draw does the spring eminate?
NRCS cooperation varies greatly. I don't recall what the concensus is in Alabama, but even within a single state I have heard stories on this forum that it will vary just as much. Your first meeting with the agent will tell you alot about their temperature. There are really no list of tips except to bone up on what it takes to build it like you were going to just go ahead and do it yourself. Ultimately, you can be your own best ally or enemy. The one true constant is to become knowledgeable and remain in control. A good NRCS office will help you in the knowledgeable department. Bring back the input and posture so we can kick it around a little bit.
I hope your NRCS agent is as helpful as the many guys and gals I worked with in Illinois. If this is the case, you will walk away reassured that your pond construction team is coming together. This is, indeed, a great way to start a project like this.

Thanks, ewest. I have read some of this material but had not seen the summary of topic links - that is very helpful.

Thank you also for the welcome, Brettski. You have created some great topics that are very helpful to someone starting out like me. It's a privilege to have your input. I grew up in flat eastern Indiana, so I can imagine why topo lines are exciting to someone in Illinois.

The draw in the west is also my preference for a site if it will work. I'm encouraged that you suggested that location from the topo! The spring starts fairly high up the draw (we haven't had the property long so my positioning is not very precise yet). The draw has a varying width as you follow the spring down, so I'm hoping that a dam in one of the narrower spots would be a cost-effective position. Because of the spring meandering through the draw the land is less useful for other purposes, so building a lake there would have less effect on other uses of the property.

You are right, the dotted line is the remains of an old country one-lane road and there are indications of a couple of old homesites on those high spots. I would love to be able to build somewhere in the middle of the property and have a view over a lake. Some of my children may eventually want to build here too, and a lake would be a great focal point for the home sites.

I don't know much about the track record of NRCS in our area. One challenge is that the property is fairly wooded (mainly mixed hardwoods) so I don't know how well someone can envision elevations and possible shorelines if you don't have a clear view. I guess I'll just listen and try to learn. I'll post the results/recommendations here to get some feedback.

Thanks again.

Some NRCS agents are worth their weight in gold. Others are worth their weight in...well...something else. Wishing you the best luck. Keep us informed.

Tim,
Do you have deeded access to a county or public road?

Brettski,
Yes, I actually have 103 acres. 100 acres is the rectangle on the topo. The other 3 acres is a funnel shaped attachment in the southeast corner that gives me 600 feet of road frontage. My access to the 100 acres is thru the 3 acres. It is actually nice because of the privacy from the road - you can't see the 100 acres from the road. Below is a better diagram of the property shape that my son sketched. The dotted lines are paths....



The tradeoff to the privacy is the long driveway. To put a house in the middle will mean we are over 2000 feet from the road. There is an existing road system sufficient for access, but if/when we build then the driveway will need gravel, culverts, and other improvements. The aerial photo below from 1996 shows the property after it was selectively logged off (cut out the pines and left the hardwoods). The property is the light colored rectangle since the surrounding property was still primarily pine trees. You can see the road system then, and the previous owner added some 4-wheeler trails around some of the property line.



The other big cost will be power lines. The local co-op quoted me $1100 per pole after the first two poles, so this may be a significant investment. The price seems steep to me but I don't have any experience developing property. Since my son may want to build a house in the next few years I'm wondering how the power should be run since there may be a need for multiple meters. I guess that will be another learning curve down the road.

Hey Tim,
Well, you are working with well over twice the acreage that our project corrals, but the driveway/access and electric strike the same chord. To compare some notes, and if you haven't been there yet, hit my website and click on the driveway tab. It is mostly boring, but you will see a resemblance.
I have already spent quality time with our elec provider, also a co-op. The nice thing about a co-op is the ease on the wallet for installation. The downside is higher juice costs in the long haul. At least that's how it works by me.
We have not installed electric yet, but the plan is laid. We want to maintain the pristine beauty of the forest so we are nix'g the poles to go underground. Yes, the cost goes up by about $5K, but in the final analysis, it is the only option for the natural look. Also, to use poles means clearing a whole bunch more timber to make room for the run....Nope. We will run the power along one edge of the rock/gravel drive. I did learn one thing, tho, during our driveway/electric run clearing and construction. We have about 1400 ft of our 2000 ft drive that was cut right into the virgin timber, so the trees line it all the way. This means the elec trench must be laid directly next to the driveway. After we laid in the mega-tons of base rock for the drive, I called out the elec guru one more time to make sure he is comfortable with the approx. 10' wide electic easement that we cleared and provided adjacent to the drive portion that winds thru the woods. Well, we wound up flagging about a dozen more trees for removal. I kinda whined about it figgerin' he was just bein' a weenie, but he pretty much holds the cards. So, while my contractor was still on site, we had him go back and pull these last trees. Because they were fairly close to the newly laid and compacted base rock driveway, the roots disturbed this foundation as they were ripped out. Yep, more patching and compacting that I did NOT want. Also, he said that since we had all that rock so close, they would surely push some of it back into the elec trench during backfill. Because of this, I now have to install a 2" PVC conduit for the wire to protect it from long-term damage by potential soil movement and abrasion from a rock. This prompted regular searches of Ebay for about a month. I wound up picking up 1600 ft of 2" PVC optical cable conduit that passed elec co approval for juice installation. It's in my garage, waiting for my bank account to rejuvenate. I asked him during one of our "walks thru the woods" what preparations I might need if I decided later that I wanted to split off of this main feed to feed another site. He said nothing. They would dig down to the main feed and tap right into it. I asked him if I should consider a larger feed line up front, just in case. He said the line that they normally install would power a small neighborhood.

Tim, congrats. The draw on the west boundry is near perfect, in terms of topography, with the possible exception of it being near the boundry of a neighbor. Where it bottlenecks is where your dam should go, for the most bang for the buck. It is exactly what you would look for as being ideal. Small dam, large impoundment. It looks like there is a descrepancy between the topos. I hope the white topo map is more accurate, as it keeps the whole pond/lake on your property.

Keep in mind, I'm just speaking from a topop standpoint. Soils or water flow may dictate another site. I hear mixed results w' the NRCS.

Good luck

I met with a lady from the NRCS this morning. I'm glad to report that she seemed knowledgeable and helpful.

We briefly discussed the two streams on the property, but she said that damming a flowing stream would require something like an act of congress. So we moved on to consider the draws that have springs.

In the west draw with the spring between the two ridges we identified two possible dam sites, one near the bottom and one closer to the top. The one closer to the top is a nicer location relative to best homesites, but would likely be a smaller lake and is more questionable as far as water source. The site at the bottom seemed to offer a larger lake site (she guessed 5 to 7 acres) and the drainage and spring source would be more reliable.

She said that the clay looked good at both sites. Apparently springs are a reliable water source for ponds in the area and she said the spring was a positive since it had a defined channel and was year round. As far as she knew no one in the area had ever had a spring become a drain, and those with springs had ponds during dry times while those relying on drainage did not.

She is going to work up some estimates of size of water and dam for both lake sites so we can decide which one to pursue. She will then bring an engineer to prepare the specs so we can get bids. She seemed to know what she was talking about and I'm looking foward to seeing what size estimates she gives us. She said that dirt moving for dams in this area was around $2.50/cu ft. Does that sound like a reasonable number?

That's all I know for now. Thanks for the input so far.

Step one comes off very well; your NRCS agent is a team player for your desires. Step two comes off even better; she is positive on the soil types AND is going to be active in the design and engineering. What you have just witnessed, my friend, is a close encounter of the pond kind. This is good stuff. I sense a good NRCS relationship in the making.
Be careful on the "reversing spring" thing. They can and do. I'm no expert and certainly don't have any practical experience, but during my crash course of pond construction and dealing with not only this forum, but numerous other peripheral sources savvy in the art, I have learned to always be wary of springs. Once again, I ask...how far up does it eminate within the draw? You will want to find it's source location relative to the proposed pondsite. If I'm you, I'm sensing a preliminary desire for the larger pond a little further down the draw IF it really is substantially larger. It's drainage area will also be larger. In time, you may still have the option of creating another smaller pond on the uphill end of the draw later; one that spills into big boy.
Oh well, enough on specualtion for now. Let's see what she comes up with. I'd say the first revolution of the ball was successful. Let's see where it rolls.
Kinda exciting, eh?

In Alabama, the possibility of reversing a spring is great. Be sure to check this out.

My NRCS agent was helpful it terms of spending a couple of hours with me looking over the site and discussing how it should be done. But when it came to actually doing anything to help, he said he couldn't. And he didn't. He said that unless the pond was for agriculture or food crop, he couldn't offer any more than his best wishes. Growing fish does not qualify. Nice guy, though.

My 2c worth is to find a good grading company who knows what they are doing, and ask their opinion about what is the best pond for your property. Then I would build it that way. Unless the NRCS is going to offer you $$$, which they won't because you aren't in Iowa. You might also consider hiring a civil engineer for $2-5k. It would be a good investment.

Brettski, thanks for the encouragement (and for the previous info about the driveway/electric - that was helpful). It was kinda exciting when she estimated that the pond would be larger than we had thought and that she thought the site looked good.

I am leaning toward the lower site if the pond will be substantially larger. The spring is well defined with a fairly deep channel. It emanates well above the lower site, but possibly within the upper site. The spring is another reason I'm favoring the lower site.

Jersey, thanks for the advice. I plan to check with local contractors, and I was considering asking them for their suggested site before sharing with them any plan I get from the NRCS. I'll be sure to ask them about the spring. Fortunately the local NRCS office is not swamped with work and they seem willing to do engineering work on a recreational dam. I'm hoping that at the least I will learn something from them that will make me more knowledgeable when I talk with a contractor.

Tim NRCS has a computer program (? proprietary) that takes the elevations they run and other info/data and spits out the answers. They helped us wrt planning on renovating a 12 acre lake. Jersey at that time (5 years ago +-) NCRS had a program that offered technical support and $$s for construction but it came with strings that we did not want attached to us.

Tim,

I can't help much with the pond, but I do have an interesting story to tell about my dealings with the power company.

About a year and a half ago I built a house on 42 acres, much like your 103 acres it was totally undeveloped. I was dealing with AEP which is not a co-op. It took them about 10 weeks to get me a firm price for running electricity underground about 700 ft to where I was going to build my house. While waiting on them someone told me that I should call the local Electric co-op. I did so and they told me that since I was over 300 feet from AEP's closest pole that the could supply electricity to me and they sent someone out right away who was able to give me a price right on the spot of $3200. The very next day AEP calls me and tells me that my cost from them would be $9600 and wanted to know when I wanted them to start. I then told him what the co-op had quoted me and he asked if I could give him 24 hours before I made a commitment to the co-op and I agreed to.

He called me back the next day and told me that because they "valued my business" that they would supply everything and run the power to my site for no charge, which is exactly what they did. They later told me that they were able to do it because of the size of the house that I was building and my future energy consumption.

I do not know if this will be any help to you but I would sure look into it. I do not know what the policy is with the other power companies, but at least AEP has the ability to negotiate and I'll bet that most of the others do as well.

Good Luck

Here's an update. I met yesterday with the NRCS lady and the "soils" specialist from her office who was there to locate the best "borrow" clay site. This meeting was not as encouraging as the first one:
- They downgraded their pond size estimate from six acres to a little over one acre . They said that was all the water I would have with a watershed of 12 acres and the flow from a year round spring. That was disappointing because the hillsides of the draw will support more depth and the width at the dam site at a 15-foot height is only about 80 feet across.
- They said they couldn't do anything else for me until I applied for and got a Corps permit (they said they'd send me the forms)
- They would do a design if I pressed them, but suggested I just let a contractor do it

At this point I'm going to try to talk to some local pond builders and see what they say. Does everyone have to apply for a Corps permit before getting design help from NRCS?

--------------
one more cast - Thanks for the suggestion. I assumed that the only electric option I had was the provider who had poles on my road, which I was told was the local co-op. Did your co-op come in from another road than AEP?

Tim, I didn't apply for a Corps permit. NRCS did mine from start to finish with no mention of the Corps.

I think I would go ahead and get a Contractor and start asking him some in depth questions.

Not sure I agree with them about the smaller size. How much water would a big rain bring to your pond? I would overbuild it. With a spring, you should cut down the evaporation. Not sure I understand their logic.

Maybe DD's NRCS office didn't have to worry about the Corps and Tim's does, which could be due to either political OR topo reasons.

When I got planning help from the local Soil & Water office on my next pond, they checked and noted it was NOT on the Corps map as a wetland. I have the impression from both them and this forum that if it had a "wetlands" designation, Corps involvement would have been (much) more likely.

I'm with Dave, and I'll betcha most posters would follow suit. Time to thank the NRCS for their assistance, keep the bridge intact, and poke around for a good, independent pond builder (if possible, talk to pondmeisters in the hood and ask 'em). Also, before you put the NRCS on ice, ask them for a list of the approved contractors that they have worked with in the past. It wouldn't hurt to intimate the ol' "go off the record" and tell me who the real deal is in the pond building arena. Further still, and this is gonna be good info as you proceed, have them explain why you need an ACoE permit. Get the details. Is it going to be a requirement no matter what/where the potential pond is...or...is it a matter of hydrolic soil conditions on your parcel that qualify as wetland...or...sumthin else.
Finally, the pond size. See the independent pond builder search above. A good guy will help you to start thinkin'. Then, we will have to do some math with avg precip and evap and it will help to have to get some kinda quantitative analysis on the spring output.

Thanks, gentlemen. That all sounds like good advice.

On the Corps permit, the soil guy said you have to have a permit before you can even plan a dam. He indicated that everyone has to have the Corps approval that the site is not a wetlands. But then he said that I shouldn't have any problem since the Corps doesn't want to come look at property. He said that all they will do is take my permit application fee (a couple of hundred dollars?), look at a topo map, see that there is not a blue line on the topo, and then approve it.

I didn't get the same sense of eagerness to help from the soil guy as from the first meeting with the NRCS lady, and she kind of hung in the background this time and deferred to him. I'm not sure how the politics work in that office. They were cordial but basically said they were done unless I had a Corps permit.

I did ask them for a list of recommended contractors and asked for their personal opinion, but all they would say was that anyone on their list was good.

I'll try to get some names of contractors to contact. I'm not sure that much can happen during the holidays but I'll post back when I have an update. Thanks again and I hope you all have a blessed Christmas season.

Tim,
Hang tight with contacting the ACoE. I don't say this because I know what I'm doing with their regard. I say it because you want to make sure you have considered all the potential ramifications before you do so. It is possible that putting yourself on their radar might be a mistake....maybe not. You are right, not alot will transpire during the holidays. Let's get some input here for you to digest, first. A good pond contractor will know how to play; this would be my next step.
As an aside, my pond contractor worked as the NRCS agent a number of years prior. He told me to secure a copy of the "strip maps" of my property from the NRCS office. These are aerial photos of the property, often depicting wetland area with a "W" or similar designation. He wasn't sure if they still had that level of mapping info available. I did ask for, and got, my strip maps from the NRCS office, but mine did not have any soil ID's....but then again, my area did not have any wetlands. Just another thought. If nothing else, it's kinda cool to have them use a color printer and send you an 8.5 x 11 color aerial of your property.

Thanks, Brettski. I feel the same and don't want to involve more government oversight unless I have to. At this point I have mixed feelings about my decision to involve NRCS. My guess is that the local office isn't too concerned about wetlands (this area is mostly thousands of acres of undeveloped timberland) but that the soils guy was from the state office and wants to play by the book. I may be wrong, but that's an impression.

On her first visit the NRCS lady did have a much more current aerial photo. I asked her if we could get a copy and she said she couldn't give me one but I could contact the state office and see if they would let me have one. At this point I'm not raising my hand for any more attention from the state office.

hi tim--i just finished building a pond in middle georgia--our nrcs people wouldn't even look at it--said only ponds they were doing now were ones involving farm irrigation. i second the suggestion that you locate a couple of good contractors who have built ponds in the area and let them give you their opinions on your sites and advice on dam location, etc--stay as far away from govt. agencies as you possibly can (legally). i paid a retired nrcs guy to come out and tell me i couldn't build it where i wanted it due to sandy soil (he dug down about 3 ft. then try to sell me some land he was selling for some timber companies that had "wonderful" pond sites on them---my pond did cost me more due to it not having an ideal situation (dam between two hills) but the contractor i had dig mine had experience in this area and he dug some test holes with a back hoe to verify the soil we'd be working with was good enough clay materil--my dam is very long and to core it we had to go down about 5 to 6 ft in places but the clay we used to core the dam and the clay that underlies the pond my contractor said was exactly the type he hauled in when people didn't have good enough clay to build their ponds. so get some more ideas from experienced contractors in your area. will follow this thread for awhile as i will soon face some of the same challlenges you are facing regarding a long driveway and running power (both)about 400 yards or so into the property. i am very interested to learn how power/driveway turn out for you. good luck--you found a good place when you located this site--good folks here.

Thanks, ga pond rookie. I hope I end up having useful info to share.

I met last week with a local pond contractor who was highly recommended. I was very impressed with him and he should give me an estimate in the next few days. He has built over 50 ponds in the area - everyone I've asked said he was great and would give me the best price for quality work. His overview of how he built dams seemed to cover all the points I've read about and he seems to like what he does.

Assuming I work with him I'm going to ask his advice about the road/driveway since he'll need to bring in heavy equipment. I'll try to post any useful info.