Talked to the excavator today. I discussed the situation with him and I think I am leaning towards building two ponds as shown on my second picture above. He recommended making each pond be filled by a culvert and then routing the overflow so that they both drain into the main culvert under the highway. That would basically cut the watershed about in half. It would leave me with two ponds each about an acre in size. Each with a watershed in the 35 to 40 acre range.
He was going to be sending a back hoe out there today to dig the test holes. He planned to dig 6-8 holes in each proposed site. Looks like I may be getting TWO great Christmas presents!