We have a detention pond at one of the lowest elevations of our land that had a washout in the dam. A few days ago, I took the excavator down to repair the washout and remove some sediment and found a seep/spring while digging. I let it be for a couple of days and when I came back, I had a pond about 30' across and 4' deep so, I'm going to excavate some more and see if I can get something with some size. We're in a very dry period here, not having any real rain since August (it's been 1/2" or less at a time with no accumulation) so, the fact that it's producing water in any volume right now is very promising. We have another seasonal spring on the property that has been dry since September or so.
So my question is this. When excavating, can I safely go to bedrock or should I try to leave some soil in the bottom? I realize that springs will give and take so I'm prepared for that, my concern is that if I go to rock, I could potentially fracture it and give the water a path it didn't have before through that rock.
I'm in the Texas Hill Country, the rock is going to be limestone. Some areas we get solid ledges and others it's a lot of large, fractured boulders. I'm guessing this is probably over a solid shelf and that's why the water is here but, of course I'm not sure since I haven't dug much yet.
The first picture is the seep when I first found it. Next is the pond that it created a couple of days later and the last is another seep I found about 60' upstream of the first one after about an hour of finding it, so there's a lot more flow at the upper seep/spring. It also ended up filling to a level about 10' higher than the first seep.
