I hear you on using water to blast the muck; makes sense. I looked online for what the maximum dissolved solids is for water with no luck. I'm curious what 1 acre pond (half drained) can hold if you start mixing the "soup" and how long it stays "in solution". During this project I am also sealing off a top drain (galvanized 60 years old-asking for problems) and putting in a syphon drain. If I oversize the syphon a bit the turn over would be fairly high. Just a thought! LOL @ me and my straw-you're right about that! Sounds more like a hard job for a 1/4 acre pond.