Hello, my wife and I just bought our dream house last year. We looked at a ton of houses. After seeing this one having everything we could want and a pond we made an offer. I grew up on 12 acres and we had a stocked pond that I loved. We bought it in April and the pond looked great, about 100x100 didn�t know how deep it was at the time. Well got to cleaning out the down trees and trash in it during spring and it looked ok. It was about 4 to 5 feet deep at the middle. Then as the weather started to warm up the water went down and got covered in algae bad, tried multiple algae killers and added a $1200 aerator. Still no help with the algae. The only water source was rain water that we know of. In June or august it completely dried up leaving us with a mud pit. It has a 2foot around pipe leading in that brings storm water in. This past summer the city had mosquito traps set up 2 feet away to monitor the west Nile virus and found positive results. The local paper did a story on it with my picture of my pond/swamp. I talked to the township road department and the water soil department and they have it classified as a drainage ditch and will not help. They tell me I can do whatever I want. Whether it is fill it in or dig it out and the city doesn�t care. But I will also be liable of any flooding. The environmental.... (Whatever you call it, the devil?) doesn�t have any say over it either. We had a guy come in to do an estimate and he said for 1200 he would dig a 100 by 60 pond and build up around it but there was no guarantee the water would stay. I�m thinking of renting equipment and digging a 50x50 hole in the middle maybe 8 to 12 feet deep and putting in some kind of liner in it. There is a lady that lives behind me that says the pond has been there since the 50s. Most of the neighbors say that it hasn�t ever dried up. A few say it gets low when the summers are really hot which last year was. I cant stand to look at this swamp another year. What do you think are my options.