I am in the early stages of planning a pond. I have had our NRCS rep to the site and he said it looked like a good spot but thats about all the help I'm going to get from them. They have been told that unless the pond is going to be used for livestock they cannot help. The soil scientist cannot do soil samples either as he has been told the same thing. Has anyone else ran into this problem?

Anyhow to my question. The pond site is a natural valley that has a seasonal creek running thru it. There will have to be some excavation to get the types of slopes I want but not enough I feel to build the dam. I've estimated the surface area using a CAD program to be around 1/2 an acre. I have an area to borrow fill from above a driveway that was put in 20 years ago. 12' of the bank was cut away for the driveway. The dirt apears to be uniform the entire height of the cut. As I started digging around to look at the soil I started to get worried. It contains alot of rocks that at first looked like shale. After messing around some more I noticed that the "rocks" could be broken easily and could actually be crushed to a fine powder in my fingers. Also when digging the "rocks" can be sheared with the shovel easily. The rocks are flat usually around 1/4" thick. I decided to do the bucket test I've read about here. I drilled several holes in the bottom and low on the side of a 5 gal bucket. I lined the bottom with 3-4" of gravel and then put around 8" of soil over that. It was packed with a spud bar. It packed very well. It was then filled to the top with water. Its been three days now and the water level has only gone down less than an 1/8 of an inch with no water coming out the bottom. I also did the jar test but it was pretty inconclusive do to the rocks. The area is said to contain a lot of clay according to the local farmers. Can any one comment on the type of soil this is and whether it would be good core material for the dam? By the way, I'm from the northern panhandle of WV.