These two projects go together, because we couldn’t do one without the other. The driveway to our future home site had to bridge the broken dam through which the pond was leaking (Grandma’s Gorge). Hang in there with us; the road through this phase has some major twists and turns.

The plan was to repair the dam and install an overflow tube under the new driveway. The working hypothesis was that the level of the pond would then raise by six to eight feet, and the surface area of the water would nearly double. But before we plugged the leak and filled the pond back up, we needed to get it in better shape.

The south bank of the pond was entirely briar and completely inaccessible. Erosion had deposited tons of silt at the main inlet, the bottom had accumulated years of decomposing leaves which occasionally released gas bubbles that formed from the natural decay, and vegetation had taken root on what would soon be under water.

The first order of business was to remove the barbed wire fence encircling the entire pond. Then, we cleared the brush around it.

The experts determined the dam failure was a result of all the trees (along with an old watering pipe from the 50’s); the roots and pipe created the conduits for erosion. Additionally, as the pond level dropped, more trees and vegetation took hold along the banks, depositing more debris into the shrinking body of water and further decreasing habitability.

The plan was to drain what little water remained, remove all the trees along the dam and banks of the pond, remove all the silt from the bottom, and core out and repair the breach, utilizing the dirt on site by reshaping the perimeter. Luckily for us—as I’ve belabored the point many times before—we have so much clay! Perhaps not the best medium for planter beds, gardens, and prairie establishment, but it’s perfect for ponds.

The same crew that built our first driveway and cleared the site for our Morton started this phase of work for us as well. We found out they had been asking about our project for more than a year, trying to find out when they could come back and work on our property again. As with any job, some days are just more fun than others, and apparently taking out trees and rehabbing ponds is more enjoyable than digging square basements. Certainly understandable. We frequently care for patients that make our days extra special, but actually being the clients with which people want to work? We wear that like a badge of honor.

In the days and weeks leading up to the arrival of heavy machinery, the excavation crew expressed concern that with our sheer volume of trees, it could be a challenge to find enough clay free of roots on our property to complete the repair. They discussed a possible need to lower the dam several feet in order to reach the clean clay. Lowering the dam would subsequently lower the future water level, making the pond smaller and leaving the other surrounding banks forever above water; that’s not what we had envisioned. I began my middle of the night internet hunts for possible solutions. What I found was several hundred tons of free, clean clay within five miles of our property. We proposed trucking the rootless clay to our property to repair and rebuild the dam back to its current height. The experts were on board and got to work.

Their first order of business was to remove trees from the dam and banks. They said the biggest challenge was trying to find places to put all the downed trees. We had mapped out a few openings ahead of time, but space was tight, so they organized the piles as they went, minimizing wasted space. They had temporarily pushed dirt into the broken dam to make a crossing and made incredible progress on just the first day.

Because the large earth-moving equipment was already on site and the opposite side of the pond was now accessible, the decision was made to begin clearing some of the trees for the future house site. That saved us money in the long run by utilizing the equipment that was already there, adding very little additional time for the crew. It became quite obvious removing trees was fun for them; they were chomping at the bit to remove more and more, and we actually had to stop them at one point.

Believe it or not, clearing some of the house site was the part that had me the most nervous of anything we had done up to that point. The dream is to have a house in the middle of the woods; therefore, we wanted as few trees as possible to be removed, no others to be damaged, and only the barest of minimums of perimeter cleared necessary to achieve the house build. Our builder decided the smartest thing to do would be to wait for the pond to fill before determining the exact positioning of the house and clearing the rest of the necessary trees. Once the pond was at its maximum capacity, the water’s edge would be the marker for gauging the distance from and elevation above where we would want to place the house. This alleviated a lot of my concerns; fortunately, only a narrow swath of trees was removed. We then had whole new piles of downed trees to contend with over the coming year…or so we thought.

While breaking the dam to drain the pond was planned for the end of day two, the guys couldn’t wait and made the first pass at it at the end of the first day.

Here’s a series from the same vantage point:

Day two of pond work involved the removal of more trees from the banks, cleanup of stumps around the future house site, and another pass at draining the pond.

A small aside here: initially, the excavation crew was very reluctant to drain the pond. We’ve been in quite the drought over the last few years, and it’s unknown how long it will take for the pond to fill back up. Additionally, draining the pond would require time for the bottom to dry before the crew could clear it out, delaying the dam repair even further. Lastly, breaching the dam could potentially create an area for leaking in the future. All valid concerns, yes, but this pond had been abandoned, going unmaintained for decades. Because we were already going through with an extensive repair of the broken dam and we wanted to restore the pond as a wildlife habitat, we couldn’t in good conscience only go halfway.

After the pond finished draining on the second day, the lead excavator confessed he didn’t believe me when I said there was 50 years worth of silt at the bottom, but that I was right; there was actually 50 years of silt at the bottom. I also got him to admit draining the water and cleaning everything out was in fact the right thing to do. He said he reached his bucket down five feet and never felt real bottom.

The next step was the hard part: waiting. We were told we had to wait for the silt at the bottom to dry out. The experts decided because the volume of silt was so immense, they would widen the breach in the dam and use a bulldozer to push all the silt out of the pond, past the dam, and use it to fill a ravine that erosion had created from the broken dam over the years. We had wanted to get that free clay being offered up so close to our property, but with the delays in starting the project, it was all gone before we could have it trucked in and piled up to wait for the repair.

To add insult to injury, we had an INCREDIBLY wet spring and early summer. Storm after storm blew through, and every time we lamented. Not only was the silt never going to dry out in those conditions, but those rainstorms had the potential to fill our pond back up in no time and instead was simply washing down into the creek. It felt like such a waste. The one silver lining, albeit a very thin lining at that, was that our seven maple trees we planted last fall had plenty of regular waterings without requiring any labor from us.

This was probably the first major time along our journey where things didn’t align perfectly and work out exactly as we wanted. Losing out on the clay and finally having scads of rainstorms when the dam was broken felt as if it should be added to Alanis Morissette’s lyrics for Ironic. While far from ideal, we kept reminding ourselves that if that was really the first time things hadn’t gone so well, we must be getting along quite luckily overall.

We began searching for more clay in the area and reached out to some contacts we’d been given—which had actually resulted from casual conversations with patients about our project. We met with a couple small town excavation companies who came out to look at our pond. Salt of the earth people, incredibly hardworking and kind, and both pond experts. We can’t say enough good things about those guys. They gave us great insight, had several wonderful ideas, and reassured us we wouldn’t need to truck in clay to fix the repair; they said they could easily rework what was there. We breathed a sigh of relief and inquired how much the work would cost. They both quoted us at 1/6th the cost of the original crew. We contacted our builder to help us reconcile the disparity. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact the original crew, we proceeded with our newfound friends.

Once on the waiting list, we started to work through some of the new piles of downed trees; not only did we want to get some of the debris out of the way for the crew, but in anticipation of our new, beautiful pond, we didn’t want its perimeter to be littered with unsightly tree piles. We also started making plans for what will be our front yard, north of the pond. We cleared out some dead trees and marked locations to plant a few new trees this fall.

The waiting didn’t just result in a pond lawn; it also came with a lot of thinking. We couldn’t help but go down a few rabbit holes of doom. They’ll have to deepen the pond A LOT to find enough clay to fill the broken dam; what if they encounter a sand vein or suboptimal soil that would leak pond water down into the ground below from the pressure of its own weight? We don’t want the front yard to be a half full pond forever. What if a root or the dam repair itself provides a weak spot for erosion problems in the future?

Well, my late night internet searches yielded the solution: sodium bentonite. Bentonite is a completely organic, inert material—a clay—in dry, powdered form. It’s the main ingredient in kitty litter, because it swells and clumps when wet. It’s also widely used as a natural pond liner. If we were saving more than 80% the original cost of this project, why not add bentonite as an insurance policy for this work to guarantee a full, leak-free pond? Seemed like a no-brainer to us. I talked to companies in Wyoming and Texas that source bentonite, and ordered 45,000 pounds of it. One full semi-truckload carries fifteen 3,000 pound bags of bentonite that can open from the bottom to make applying the powder easier. The freight charges would’ve been the same for half a truckload or a full truckload, and serendipitously, the recommended 2-3 pounds per square foot application rate worked out to about that 22.5 ton mark anyway. The new pond expert we hired was happy to oblige and even unloaded the semi for us.

A couple weeks later, it was showtime. Originally, the first order of business was to get the 50+ years worth of silt out of the bottom of the pond, but after a quick assessment with the excavator, he had to come up with a new plan.

The sheer amount of silt was going to create some problems. 1. If he went ahead and started scooping out the silt, it would leave a deep bowl that would immediately start catching water, but we needed it dry throughout the repair. 2. Where would he put all that silt? He couldn’t guarantee that he’d find enough good clay at the bottom of the pond under the silt, so he decided the place to pull additional clay from was the clearing at the bottom of the dam opposite the pond. One minor (major) problem: most of the downed trees were sitting atop that very spot. 3. If he started by scooping out the silt, it would completely overtake the back side of the dam, making the main pile of downed trees inaccessible and simultaneously covering up one good reservoir of clean clay needed for the dam repair.

So the NEW first order of business would be to stow enough clean dirt/clay off to the side, sitting ready for the repair before removing the silt and allowing the pond to catch water. In order to do that, we needed to get rid of the massive tree pile inconveniently perched above that reservoir of clay.

The work, then, actually started with pulling that pile forward and burning it. For what it’s worth, we reached out to numerous tree service companies to inquire about having the wood chipped/mulched. We wanted to spread all the chipped wood over the future garden area to start creating better top soil. To our surprise, every single service said they wouldn’t chip it and advised us to burn. Now that time was of the essence, we let the experts take care of it. He worked the pile for a couple days, using his excavator to stoke the fire, turning everything to ash. Surprisingly (and generously), he used his machinery to pick up the other smaller piles, stacked at various points around the perimeter of the pond and added those to the fire as well. He saved us months worth of work—and multiple replacement chainsaw chains—in just a few days.

Once that massive tree pile was gone (along with all the other piles too), he dug a large hole—or two—and harvested as much dirt/clay as he could for the repair. The stage was set, and timing was everything. He needed a decent stretch of dry days to accomplish the next series of tasks in quick succession. 1. Remove the silt from the bottom of the pond. 2. Fill in the hole he dug on the back side of the dam with the silt and find additional places for the excess silt to go. 3. Use the good, clean dirt/clay he harvested to fill in, widen, and repair the dam 4. Reshape the banks and clean up the main inlet into the pond. 5. Disc in 45,000 pounds of powdered bentonite into the bottom and sides of the dry pond. 6. Compact everything down to create a smooth, watertight pond basin.

That list might not strike one as all that imposing, but let me tell you, it was an incredible feat. We had several more midsummer thunderstorms, one of which yielded more than a whopping five inches of rain. The silt removal alone was enough to impress a man who does it for a living. It turned out to be more than six feet deep worth of silt in some areas that had accumulated over the decades. Our future pond got really deep, really quick, but that wasn’t quite the end of it…

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Are you hanging in there with me? Now is a good time to get a snack or take a quick bathroom break. We’ll call this the intermission.

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Feeling refreshed? Should we get back at it? Here’s a few pictures to show the progression of the repair in just a few days.

He shot a laser across from the dam to help determine the future waterline and set flags around the perimeter. Then, he cleaned up the inlet to the pond; this both gave him some more clean dirt to work with but also helped us prepare that major thoroughfare to reduce erosion and silting in the future. We actually had him build a structure upstream from the pond which serves as a sediment basin/settling pool. Further up the main feeder channel, he essentially constructed another mini pond basin and dam. The majority of runoff to the pond flows through this area first, sediment will settle in that new pooling area, and mostly clear/clean/sediment-free water will run out and into our pond. That ‘mini’ pond basin/sediment pool will get cleaned out every few years or so, and our pond itself stays crystal clean…that’s the plan, at least!

Next, he set an overflow tube under the future driveway—two sections of 18-inch diameter culvert pipe to be exact. This serves as the emergency spillway. An emergency spillway is a secondary outflow where large volumes of water can quickly go in events of very heavy rain. If the level of the pond rises too fast, the excess water will run out of the pond, through the pipe, and eventually meet up with our creek without running over the dam and washing out our driveway.

He also set the main drain for the pond on the southwest corner. We didn’t want a pipe or tube placed in the same spot the dam had broken through before so he used a quick drain, commonly used in low lying farm fields to save crops. That drain sits just below—one foot, to be exact—the level of the emergency spillway tubes. It can handle normal rainstorms and typical ebbs and flows of the water level. It will serve as the primary overflow drain for the pond. The 8” tubing/pipe attached to that drain was buried under the new driveway, skirting around the fresh dam repair and dumping into a drainage channel close to our creek.

With the main components now complete, we had a few more unique requests. That main drain was low profile and met our needs; however it wasn’t the most attractive thing at which to look. It will be sticking up above the water, across (and within view) from the eventual house. It’s about 18 inches by 18 inches and bright yellow. We asked the pond guy (I eventually started referring to him as a pond whisperer, because “pond guy” just doesn’t really do him justice) to build us a shelf just below the drain, extending into the pond—which he said he normally does anyway. However, our plan was to place a large boulder on that shelf in front of the yellow eyesore, blocking the view of it from the future house. It also would serve as a bit of a debris screen, helping to keep leaves and twigs away from the drainage inlets.

We have a whole lot more rock to place and a whole lot more landscaping to do, so hold those thoughts for now, because we have a few more pressing issues.

With the dam repair finally complete, two major things happened: 1. We could now access the future house site with vehicles, and 2. The water level of the pond could rise high enough to support aquatic life again. What exactly do those two things mean? More work. That’s right, we had more work to do.

Now—as has been the case with this phase of the project—Mother Nature threw us a few more curve balls. We were only a few days away from the official completion of the pond rehab and dam repair, when we received storm after storm after storm. The pond began collecting water, but the ground was too wet and slick to finish the surrounding dirt work. So, the clock started ticking on being able to finish the drainage areas and install our underwater landscaping before the water level rose too high.

We wanted to focus on our plans for aquatic life. We didn’t just want to restore habitat for fish and amphibians, but also for insects, waterfowl, mammals, and all the creatures with which we share our property; however, because the rehabbed pond still had exposed banks, that was our one chance to install fish habitats exactly the way we wanted them. I have A LOT more to say about fish habitats, so they get their own post; that’ll be coming shortly.

As we waited for the pond to continue to fill, we implemented our preplanned peri-pond landscaping. Again, we wanted to prioritize habitat restoration, so we developed a new homemade prairie/native plant seed mix, specifically targeted for wetlands and water’s edge and great for pollinators and birds alike. Originally, I planned to risk it with a summer planting because we wanted roots to hold back the bank during potential fall rainstorms; however with continued delays in the project, seeding wasn’t possible until late August/early September. By that time, we’d be too close to potential frosts to guarantee tender seedlings would survive their first winter. Instead, we opted for a light seeding of annual rye around the banks; that will germinate quickly and serve as a cover crop this fall. We’ll reserve our custom water’s edge mix for our usual wintertime dormant seeding to give everything the best chance of germination next spring. The annual rye will be short lived, and we’ll do regular mowings throughout the first few years to optimize chances for all the forbs to eventually flower.

We’ve learned a lot through our first few stages of prairie establishment and decided to use all our tricks on the pond banks. Yes, they’re sloped. Yes, they’re packed with clay. Yes, they’re permanently adjacent to water. A trifecta of challenges. Here was the strategy:

1. Score the clay banks above the estimated future waterline. The thought here was to provide a rough surface to which the next layer could stick—like sanding two smooth surfaces before gluing them together. More traction, more surface area, and more grip should slow runoff down the banks and reduce erosion and washout potential.

2. Add a modest layer of high quality top soil over the scored clay (only on the banks above the future waterline). Our rationale with this one is that we’ve found our packed, non-surface clay to be devoid of air and not an optimal medium to germinate seed or support immature root systems. The pond guy/whisperer helped us spread black dirt harvested from our property near the main inlet to the pond around the banks quickly. This would’ve taken days—probably weeks—of backbreaking work if done with a shovel and wheelbarrow.

3. Broadcast seed a cover crop of annual rye to get us through this fall, followed by a dormant seeding this winter utilizing a customized mix of native plant species over the new top soil and rye. For this new pond’s edge mix, we picked five species of grasses and more than 15 species of forbs—all suited to wet and variable light conditions. We went 40/60 on grasses and forbs with this mix. Normally, we try for 60/40; however, due to the required cold stratification for most forb species, along with their slower growth, we felt we needed to give them a leg up for contending with the steep slope and water’s edge. We upped the forb ratio to give those species a better chance of coming up next spring and giving us a balanced prairie stand in the end.

Almost most important in this mix is the volume of Riverbank Wild Rye, Fowl Manna Grass, and Virginia Wild Rye we added. Those three species are found at water’s edge, are often used in stream bank restorations to control erosion, and do not need cold stratification. They should germinate, grow, and establish roots quickly next spring. We hope that will provide the support and protection to both mitigate erosion of the banks during the first year and serve as a haven for all those slower growing forbs, which make up more than half the mix.

4. Cover the topsoil and seed with 100% biodegradable jute, and secure with biodegradable stakes. We implemented a lot of interventions to decrease erosion of our pond’s banks, so we want to try to prevent erosion of our interventions too. We wanted some kind of blanket that was completely biodegradable without plastic netting, as that can be dangerous for aquatic wildlife. We also wanted the covering to have large enough openings to facilitate quick and easy germination of those stabilizing grasses. Jute serves those purposes, will degrade quickly, and will also hold some moisture during drier times. Additionally, the jute webbing will disperse some of the force of falling rainwater and help keep the soil and seed where we put it.

There’s a couple more things that came up during this phase of our project. We were originally going to have gravel placed over the dam, completing the driveway and calling it finished; however, the crazy brain of mine remembered a quick comment our builder made years ago. He said the utility lines (water and electricity) would “probably just follow the drive.”

I’m no expert, but wouldn’t trenching those utility lines be easier, faster, and less expensive if it was done when the dam was still just dirt? So we’re going to have our builder look into laying the utility lines from the main road, up the driveway, and over to the house site. That would be one more major line item we can cross off the estimate. We also shouldn’t have to pay the nominal “access” fees until we actually connect those lines at the road, so for now they could just be there.

As you can see, we have plenty more work to do here—along with a couple more surprises and finishing touches—, so stay tuned. We’ll add an updated look at the pond in a few months so you can see the progress it’s/we’re making. We had been in a drought for the last few years here, so let’s all hope for rain and lots of it!