Just got the best possible news here on the pond. My neighbor came up to take a look at what was going on, after poking around some he asked if I had a shovel so we could uncover a bit more of the pipe to see what was there. The final 15 foot of pipe was fully exposed (12 inch PVC) but there was about 2 foot of dirt on the next 20 feet. after moving more of the uphill dirt we found the end of the exposed pipe and it wasn't connected at all to the next section. There was a 3 foot section between this lower pipe and the next section. Guessing they came disconnected a few years back and the space has increased. So where I was seeing the water breaching the surface and all the sink hole effect I saw looks to be tied to this separated section. For now I've left the two disconnected. Once we exposed the upstream section of pipe a whole bunch of water came spewing out...interesting to see how water spreads out when stopped up.

Getting 2 inches of rain tonight, should help to clear all the crap out of the pipe and I think I can leave the bottom 20 foot of pipe off...or I could reattach, more of an effect on the stream, not so much the dam. Thank you to all for the comments and thoughts along the way. This IS why I joined this group. Feels like a bunch of been there done that type of people who will help me understand how to care fo this pond I like a lot and don't yet know how to care for it.

I have a 50 foot semi-rigid cable camera delivered on Tuesday and I am going to snake it up the pipe to get a feel for what the rest of my pipe looks like. I'll update you all next week. I was going to post pictures of this but the site didn't accept JPEGs (surprising). Anyway, thank you all for the feedback.

Tom Coleman
704-756-5659