Welcome to the forum from a fellow Iowan. You are in the right place to learn about building and maintaining a pond. The experts will hopefully step in to help answer questions for you. I would highly recommend you contact your county NRCS office to begin the process of pond building. They were invaluable when I built my pond in 2012. They can help you with all the questions you have about permitting, soil suitability, drainages etc and it is all provided free of charge. In addition, they also helped arrange state funded cost share to have the pond built. In my case, permitting was a major PITA. I ended up needing permits from the Corps of Engineers, State Historical Preservation office, NRCS and three from the Iowa DNR. It took two years for the permitting to be finalized, but once you get your pond built and get it up and running, you will never look back.
In the mean time, give us more information on your goals. Will the pond be for swimming, trophy fishing, or so the kids can catch a bunch of fish? Is there natural flow into the proposed pond site from a stream? What is the acreage of the runoff? Will the nearby river flood and reach the pond on an intermittent basis? The more info you can provide, the better advice the experts can give. Again, welcome to the forum.
