Hmmmm....reading through this post and thinking about some that I've read previously. Power is close enough to aerate. I wonder if aeration combined with beneficial bacteria might help to reduce the muck in the pond. Up to 4' is a lot of stuff to excavate and/or breakdown naturally.
If you have time on your side perhaps there's a way to save a few dollars while nature does it's work over a year or two and lowering your excavation costs overall with less material present. Gives you some time to work on the olives in prep for expansion efforts / possible dredging in the future.
That is an intriguing idea, yes power is close enough. The 4 ft of soft stuff is only in a reactively small area, the deepest. Do you think it might be possible to push an aerator to the bottom of that goo? Might that work? Half or more of the pond is only around 4 ft deep, it has about 2 or 3 inches of the sludge, not much but smells pretty bad...
Might it work to get a larger blower and vigorously aerate in the muck to both add oxygen for decay and to suspend some of the solids so they can just flow out the discharge? Could do that for a while, then switch to a more pond appropriate size aerator?
I was told that with my flow, ~50 gpm, that the added pond bacteria probably would not stick around. Plenty of bacteria down there already, LOL
