Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Why isn't the spring filling the pond up

Jennifer, I'm not a hydrology expert but:

A spring is the result of ground water and the underground water table being higher somewhere than the outlet you have. That outlet creates an opportunity for the water to escape. Since the water table is higher than the outlet(spring) it creates pressure from the weight of that entrapped water that allows the water to flow into a lower void. It's the same thing that makes a dam leak.

In my arid area of NW Texas our water table is seldom high enough to create the needed pressure from the weight of the entrapped water to create a flow into a lower area.

A water well(in most areas) is the result of drilling down into an aquifer; usually water bearing sand that is trapped above a rocky area below. Thus we poke(drill) a hole in the ground searching for a sandy area where ground water over the ages has been trapped. We sleeve(case) the hole to keep the sand from collapsing back into the hole and install a pump to bring it to the surface. The water bearing sand is an aquifer.

An artesian well flows because there is a great amount of water at a higher level that the outlet. The weight of that water pushes the water out any void that it can find.

I have one spring on my land. I found an area that was always muddy and had a dozer dig it out. It always held water back when we used to get a lot of rain. However, over time our rains have diminished and that 6 ft deep seam(ground water/aquifer) has dropped significantly due to tree roots sucking on it and lack of rain to replenish it. Now when we get rains that fill the small pond, it runs backwards into the seam and sucks the pond dry. Since the weight of the water above the seam/aquifer is heavy, the void is replenished from the hole I dug and I have a dry pond.

All of the above means that a spring can both give and take depending on the level of the underground water table.