Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Filling Quarry

I have a quarry that I want to make a bit shallower, it is around 3 acres and around 100ft deep, any ideas on how to fill the bottom up a bit.
Current idea is to push in the sides, making surface area larger and bringing the bottom up a bit, but that will be difficult as it was a dolomite quarry and wed be trying to dig into rock.

Any other ideas or advice, preferably something that will be a bit cheaper than the above.

Thanks in advance

Find a nearby construction project doing a lot of excavating that needs someplace to put the offal.

Does it fill with rain water or ground water?

Pumping out water is much cheaper (usually) than moving that much rock.

Another idea, would be to allow your pond to be a construction material dump for the county or some other large entity. If they were only dumping inert material like broken concrete or unusable fill dirt that contains too many rocks, that might be a viable solution.

Final idea would be to get a blasting permit. I doubt they would allow it, but blasting the remaining highwalls in the quarry would make your lake larger in surface acres, but fill in the bottom and make it shallower.

Was looking at blasting, but there are homes nearby, so doubt that will be possible
It is underground spring filled
The walls are near vertical, so dropping water level unfortunately wont do much other than making fishing impossible.
Will see about the dumping site idea, main issue with that is I dont want anything in there that might harm the fish, hence the inert stuff, so will have to control that,
Other problem is, im in South Africa and acquiring a permit is usually a massive struggle as government is useless.

Thanks for the suggestions guys

I never clicked on your location. I just assumed that "Randburg" was some small town in Pennsylvania that I had never heard of.

After reading your follow up, I do not see any easy solutions to your problem.

I would therefore shift your focus off of your pond, and on to your fishery. One option would be to develop "pelagic fish". These are fish that do NOT live near the shorelines or near the bottom of a body of water.

In the U.S., people in your situation would probably try to make a striped bass and shad fishery, or perhaps a white bass and shad fishery. The other option (in the U.S.) is hybrid striped bass. They readily eat pellets and will gain weight rapidly.

I have no idea if any of that is within the regulations in South Africa. If not, then I suspect there are several species of similar indigenous fish that would fit the same environmental niche.

Perhaps do an internet search on the fish I described for the U.S. until you have a good understanding of their habitat, and then determine your S.A. analog?

Good luck on your big pond project!

Thanks, appreciate the advice.
We dont really have anything like that that is local to us unfortunately. All we have that is really fishable and is local is Catfish and Yellowfish, Catfish are plentiful everywhere and Yellowfish like flowing water. We then also have Bass and Carp that have kind of been naturalized, not native, but accepted as they don't cause the type of damage that they do in places like the US and Aus.
The plan is for a private carp fishing venue (I'm sure all the Americans just threw up in their mouths)
Currently looking at the costing of digging more lakes around this one and dumping the removed soil into this one, but first need to do tests to check how deep the dolomite is in the surrounding areas.

I like the idea of you creating your own "fill" material on the property.

Do you have AC electricity on the property? With your mild climate and some aeration, you could probably get by with some fairly shallow ponds (8-10' deep) if that is all of the room you get above the dolomite bedrock.

Is the bedrock porous and/or fractured? If it is a 100' thick layer of massive rock, then it might serve as the seal for your ponds. If it will not hold water, then you will need to excavate down to bedrock, and then compact a clay blanket over the dolomite.