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.
