I have a piece of property that is appox 12 acres in all. 3/4 of the total is water. See below pictures. The issue that i have run into this year is that the amount of rain over the past few months has brought the pond to a all time high of (avg 10 feet deep). Typically its 7-8 at most.
We had a swail (Sp), dug. (essentially a ditch that is graded to slope towards the water and pull the excess water off the middle area of the land, depicted in the pics below). Well it worked great until the water level essentially rose 3.5 feet in a matter of a few months. Now the the land is beginning to back flood (and honestly would have flooded anyways as we have had tons of rain, tons (only source of water for this pond)).
We knew that we would have to have more fill dirt brought in to the middle "island" part of the property but never thought that it would get this bad. Then someone suggested us looking into the cost of digging a small (blue gill) pond in the middle, and using that dirt to fill in some of the surrounding low areas... opposed to having to bring in truck loads of dirt, etc.
If they are comparable in cost, we would like to have a bg/forage pond that could somehow supplement the existing pond.
Brings me to one of my questions. Is there a general rule of thumb when it comes to estimating the cost of equipment work/fill dirt work as i'm describing? I'm in the lowcountry of South Carolina. Seems like digging a 4-6 foot deep pond towards the lowest part of the 'island' area would supply enough dirt to accomplish our goals.
Another option would be to have a long boomed track hoe come in and pull dirt/sludge off the bottom of the pond and fill in the 'island' area. You can see in one of the google map shots that we added on a corner to the pond when we dug the shallow areas out some for a small amount of fill dirt.
2 more pictures of ground view of area. keep in mind that this is at a all time high and most of the water is probably contributed to the (swail sp) drainage ditch that out flow fell below the current water level.
If you pump well water, bounce is over something like Cecil does with his packed column so it oxygenates and degasses the water before it enters the pond.
Well what I actually meant to say was that I have a deep well submersible pump that is no longer in a deep well (we switched out pumps/long story). I feel like i could somehow rig a structure that would make use of the 'extra' deep well pump that would supply the additional pond with water from the larger body of water.
