POF,

Sorry, that sucks.

In my state (Kansas) there is a listing of certified engineers in the documents of our agency that regulates larger ponds and dam construction. These are generally civil engineers that only work on that type of project.

I met with one of the engineers for a potential project, and he was a very git 'er done type of guy.

Perhaps Georgia has a similar listing (or you could find one on your own)?

If you found a very reasonable engineer, he might charge you for one hour and write a brief plan that might satisfy the local bureaucrats.

I am thinking along the lines of: place muck upstream of the pond for drying and later spreading, any silt run off will go back into the pond basin and will not cause any erosion or siltation problems off of the applicants property. (A real engineer should be able to improve greatly on that.)

Good luck extracting yourself from the gears of the machine that is currently crushing you!