Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Central Ohio Pond

Hi! I wish I'd known of this site years ago when we bought our property with our pond!

We live in central Ohio and bought property that had an existing 2.5 acre pond. It was created 30 years prior (we've been told) by damming up a creek that runs through the property. Approximately 235 acres of farmland feed into our pond. This is not ideal, to say the least. The pond is now mostly full of dirt and we started a few years ago looking for someone to fix it for us. This has been no easy feat. NO ONE wants to do this work. We had several people quote us and claim they wanted to do it, but they never showed up. We found someone last fall who says he wants to do it. He has gone so far as breaching the dam for us so that most of the water can drain and the dirt can dry out before he excavates this coming year, so he says. Fingers crossed he actually shows up to do the work, which includes:
* Removing all vegetation from all areas of the dam and surrounding banks (30+ years of trees, shrubs, etc)
* Removing all the excess dirt from the pond. He gave us an estimate of how much dirt he thought that was but I can't remember. A lot. Then more.
* Move all the dirt to other parts of our property
* Rebuilding/repairing the dam in some areas
* Fixing the overflow pipe (make it bigger)
* Create a way for us to manually control the depth of the pond
* Repair/improve the emergency spillway

I plan to spend a lot of time here in the coming weeks reading everything I can find that is similar to our situation. Hopefully this guy shows up and does the job. We're looking forward to having our pond restored mostly for swimming and fishing.

235 acres of watershed in Ohio for a 2.5 acre pond is TOO MUCH!

Most of us worry about having too little water for our ponds. You have the opposite problem.

When you are removing fill from your pond, you might consider building a few berms to divert some of the surface runoff around your pond. If the topography allows, you should preferentially divert the water from the most frequently tilled land.

Another option is to add a settlement pond upstream of your main pond. You are going to have to utilize heavy equipment to accomplish your goals for the main pond. Once the pricey stuff is on site, adding another small pond should not add too much more to your total costs - and you will get a much longer productive life for your main pond.

Good luck on your project!