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Large Natural Spring Fed Ponds

16K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  Zurp 
#1 ·
I have a large stock pond on my property that is spring fed and had lots of life only 4 years ago. You could literally go out, stand next to the water, and see the juvenile large mouth bass swim past your feet in the shallows and the catfish amongst the cattails. There were crappie, bass, catfish, turtles, snakes, sunfish, etc.

Well, over the past 4 years the wildlife has all died out from this pond and it does not stay full like it use to. My sis says that that the spring is covered over on the bottom with sediment and that is why everything has died off and why the pond keeps going down because no new water is coming in from the spring.

How would I go about re-vamping this pond? Dredge it? How would you clean the sediment from the pond bottom to release the spring back to filling the pond again? Just dig it out some again? Any links, advice, etc. appreciated!
 
#2 ·
I would definitely consult with your loval environmental agencies before tampering with natural waterways. Your actions could have unforseen repurcussions elsewhere that could potentialy be catastrophic.
The answer is probably to dredge the stream to unclog it and restore water flow. But what caused the stream to clog? Possibly fertizler runoff has caused excess plant/algae growth? Do some more searching to find out the root cause of the problem or you might find yourself digging the stream out every year!
 
#4 ·
We had a similar situation here in Suffield, Connecticut. Our house had a small pond, about 20 foot diameter. The pond seemed to be fed from a creek that ran into the pond. Eventually, the creek dried up, and the pond continued to overflow into the exiting creek, that led to a small stream. Near the end of summer, no water was flowing out, and the pond was slowly shrinking. (This hurt me emotionally, because I loved this frog filled pond.)

Examining the surroundings downstream, I could see bank erosion that was up as high as three feet from the current water level... This erosion was in the form of horizontal gashes, not vertical walls. (Vertical walls mostly appear when banks fall into fast moving wide and shallow creeks, where as vertical slices indicate water levels that rise and fall, up to those points.) Heading upstream revealed a different situation, there were more vertical sloped walls, telling me that the apparent inlet to my pond was not the major source of water.

Further examination of the pond as it almost completely dried showed that the pond had a loose clay bottom. The walls and slopes of the pond were mostly mud-rock, The soft clay had washed away, and left behind the heavy mud-rock base. When I moved most of the heavy rocks up to the outer edges, the muddy water revealed clear jets of incoming water... Strange, because it never seemed to fill...

Water was coming from underground channels between the semi-hardened mineral clay, and exiting by a similar manner. All the water would eventually end up back at the same place. I decided that I better not intervene, not wanting to flood the neighbors yards, as this LOW that our pond was going through might have been a needed process to help the rest of the surrounding land drain enough to be balanced. I ended up spending the remainder of that year strategically placing rocks back into the shallow pond. Cleaned most debris avoiding the weeds. I also assumed that the weed roots helped to plug up the pond, allowing it to fill, then they rot, allowing it to drain...

That winter, we had a real good snow, and a long frozen winter. When the ground started to thaw, the pond filled and then overfilled. I got to see first hand why the banks had the horizontal gouges in them. The water rose in the stream as well. The pond almost doubled in size, now I know why they had a drain pipe at one end... up in the air, above the water-level.

This pond had annual rise and fall, directly related to the local water table and rainfall for that year. Yours may be similar, with a slower reaction. Few ponds rise and then fall off the earth... Unless they divert water upstream that may have normally filled your pond.

One more thing to consider, a true spring fed mineral pond will not easily sustain life, as the minerals are usually too high of a concentration, and there is no oxygen in the water. If your pond has life, then the feed may be from underground seepage from a higher stream with air contact, or fish may be there as they tried to swim upstream in the spring, and got caught in the receding pond... If you do have a downstream, you may have to wait for the streams water table to rise enough to back-fill your pond with a majority of the fresh water.

If you post photos of the pond and any inlets/outlets, I can give you a little more info.

I would not suggest dredging, as you may only make it drain faster. However, if there is a run-off, and you can restrict water flow enough to get the previous level back, than that may be a possibility. (That will require a visit to the appropriate state departments. Some guy could have been crying because his yard has been mostly flooded for the past five years, now he has a yard... and your dam may flood his yard again. On the other hand, the state may have allowed a drainage system to be installed upstream, that is excessively draining surrounding water that was desired.)
 
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