SSJ,

It makes my stomach a little upset looking at your beautiful pond getting ruined.

It is difficult to evaluate something over the internet, but yes - it looks like your contractor was not a pond builder. He did a beautiful job shaping the pond, but apparently did not understand the correct engineering.

Look at the next to last picture you posted. Do you see all of the plant roots still in their original position? That bank has NOT been cut and then compacted in lifts! It appears that he mostly just dug and shaped a "hole" on your property and called it a pond.

Lots of questions need to be answered before the people on Pond Boss can give you some good advice.

1.) Is the bank of your pond actually adjacent to the river? When the river comes up during a flood stage, will water be rushing past your bank? If so, that will always be exposed to significant erosive forces. You would need to take measures to protect your bank, but there are lots of rules about altering the banks of rivers and streams in Kansas.

2.) You talk about filling your pond with well water. Does any significant surface water run into your pond from the slope of the land after a rain event? If not, you do not need an outlet structure or spillway - as long as you don't leave your well on and flood your pond over the top of a bank.

If you do get surface (rain) water into your pond, then yes, you must have an outlet system and perhaps an emergency spillway. One of the most important factors in the design of the system will be the size of the area (acres) that drains into your pond.

3.) Even a perfectly constructed dam or pond levee is likely to be breached when water starts running over the top. The water usually creates a small crevice and that channels more of the flow into that spot, which works to erode a continuously larger channel, until the water cuts right through the dam or bank.

Looking at your first picture, I think most of us thought that is what happened to your pond. However, reading your additional postings, it appears that may NOT have been the case? Did water go over the top of your bank and cause the damage, or did the bank collapse with not a chance that the pond level was higher than the bank?

If the latter, then I think your bank collapsed just due to the poor construction of the bank. I suspect that as your pond filled, your banks slowly became water saturated. Did you walk around the perimeter of your pond after it was mostly full? Did you observe the outside slopes of your banks being soggy or even weeping some water?

There is a good chance that water slowly worked through that un-compacted bank where you see all of the plant roots. When the water reached the outside of the bank, it started washing out just a few grains of dirt. However, as those grains were washed out of the path of the slowly moving water, the path very slowly grew a bit wider each day. Eventually, there was a rapid flow of water and "whoosh" there went your bank.

Please examine your pond construction closely while thinking about some of the things people have written in your replies. Hopefully, you can then determine the likely cause of the bank failure. Take more pictures and write up your thoughts and observations. You must accurately diagnose the problem before you can determine the best solution.

Good luck on your pond repair!