Originally Posted By: karoever
I have a 14 acre lake that is about 20 years old. Recently, the water level control drain pipe developed a substantial hole on the underneath side about 3 feet under normal level (looks like rust and corrosion). The pipe is 24" corrugated galvanized steel and is 100' long running under damn. There is no stackpipe.

I attempted to temporarily fix the leak by strapping a piece of corrugated steel to bottom of pipe. It worked great for about 10 days until water pressure caused the pipe to bend upward to the point that the pipe is no longer under water.
This has raised the normal level about a foot and if it rains, the lake drains over emergency spillway.

- Are there ways to fix this without digging up and replacing entire drain pipe?
- What is reason not to use emergency spillway as permanent drain system?
- What can be done to reduce fish kill if I have to drain lake down approx 6 feet?


Welcome to the forum!

1) Not that I know of.
2) If the emergency spillway is earth, the water will slowly erode the soil at first, then faster, and you have the potential of the whole dam breaching if a large enough rain event happens for a long enough duration.
3) How deep is the pond ? The fish might very well survive the drawdown to fix the dam without any significant fish kill.

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