My old refurbished pond was likely originally built some time before I was born (64 years ago soon). I remember as a teenager my dad contracting a neighbor that had a D7 to break the dam and clean it out. That pond always had a seep on the back side of the dam. I know because there was a spot probably ten feet in diameter that we did not mow with the bush hog unless it was the driest of times or the mowing tractor would get stuck. Don't ask me how I know. It was a cattle watering pond although there were many days it had secondary use as fishing and swimming.

Point is that pond always had a leak or at least a seep. According to my NRCS guy lots and lots of farm cattle watering ponds have those seeps on the back side of the dam. He gave us plans for a core trench to help prevent that when we built our main pond. The seep was never enough to seriously detract from the ponds main use.

When I rebuilt it a few years ago I completely dug down the face side of the dam and added probably three or four times the material on the back side of the dam to both try and stop the seep and also make the slope safe for mowing. It had always been too steep to mow the back slope. I also dug down as deep with the dozer as I could where the seep had been before adding the additional dam material over it and compacting. I either 1. stopped the seep (because it is no longer wet there) or 2. pushed the leak lower down the bank where it seeps into a seasonal creek right behind the pond. But at any rate, either fixed or transferred to a new area, it is no longer wet on the back side of the dam.

Point is ponds can have small leaks or seeps and they can still work for many years. When the leak is too big to keep the pond at proper levels or the leak is such that it leaks enough to cause dam erosion and eventual failure then the leak is a big problem.

As long as the water is not flowing enough to cause erosion in the leak area, there is hope that sediment will eventually fill the pores enough that the leak will be only a minor seep. If the leak is fast enough to erode soil, it likely will only get worse.

Last edited by snrub; 03/20/18 10:21 AM.

John

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