pond problems

[prairiegardens]

Had a pond on the property, probably about 20 feet across and 8-12 feet deep, when I arrived that had been there for years (so I was told) which apparently handled stock and wildlife with ease, certainly 7 horses and assorted moose, elk etc didnt seem to faze it until recently...but over the past three years or so has quietly been going dry. Last summer..which offered plenty of rain and had no stock on the place, it was just soggy looking mud at the bottom. I can't climb around in it, if I somehow managed to get in I would never get out, so anyone have any ideas about what's happened and what to do about it? Some small willows have volunteered in the general area which I HOPE to get pulled out this spring, hard to imagine they would have pulled that much water out. I am at a loss, but since I was counting on the pond for garden water, it's a major concern.  Any ideas about what caused the failure and what to do about it?

[philagardener]

This sounds like it may take some detective work.

Inputs: is rain the only water source, or does a spring supply water? Is your water table near to the pond level, or far below it? Things may be fluctuating (naturally, unnaturally?) over time. Maybe you can check historical rainfall for your area to see if there has been a change that might explain lower recharge rates.

Outputs: any outflows that you could slow? If this is an artificial pond, maybe a liner (plastic, clay) has been breached by age, damage or an animal (any muskrat activity in the area?)

Just a few thoughts - hope you get to the bottom of this and can solve the issue!

[flowerbug]

there is a lot of missing information... how large is your property? do you have a well? is it very deep? any neighbors install a well recently or have they increased their water pumping? in some areas the past few years have been pretty dry so perhaps you are in a local drought and it will change again.

you may not think that a small bush or tree can influence water levels, but they certainly can when you add up the gallons.

also, is there any kind of windbreak or shade change? those can also be large factors.

[prairiegardens]

Some more details, the property is 80 acres, no near neighbors, the pond is at the edge of mature poplar trees, the water table is fairly high as a lake runs under the property... the neighbors' wells run from 19 to 30 feet so the pond is likely only a dozen feet or so above the water table.

I don't have a well, and I didn't build the pond so I'm unsure if there is some sort of water flow into it but the land above it is very sandy so I cannot imagine there is that much water runoff getting into it. That's a problem because IF there was a spring of some sort I could just put bentonite clay everywhere else but if it's seepage I'm assuming that bentonite, being good at keeping water IN, would also keep seepage water OUT.

The only change in terms of trees are the young volunteer willows, which are growing annoyingly quickly. but are not really very close to the pond, the closest maybe 10 feet and the others further. We are not in a drought area, so far our weather is consistent about coming from the north west, mostly, and that crosses over a large lake, we had so much water last summer that I never got to use more than half of two rain barrels.. they would fill up again and over flow before I needed any others...ended up dumping the 4 extra barrels in the fall so they wouldn't freeze and break the barrels. So decidedly not the lack of rain... that makes me think it might have originally been a spring source for the pond.

How do you find where a spring is? would it be smart to put bentonite just on the floor of the pond? I have ground squirrels and gophers here but haven't ever seen a water type animal like a muskrat and there are no obvious holes in the banks of the pond,(that I saw anyway) nor obvious markers other than those typical of gophers...not that I would know if I saw them though. Lots of lumps and bumps around down there but I am assuming those are gopher lumps and bumps, as I know those are around down there, they did a number on my potatoes and killed my young chestnut trees, the holes came up right beside each one.
Do muskrats make lumps and bumps or just channel into the sides?

Thank you all for the feedback,it's very much appreciated as I feel somewhat paralyzed as to how even to start to address the problem, not one I ever thought to have to deal with.

[prairiegardens]

one thing that HAS changed... a neighbor has built a house about a half a mile away although they aren't in it yet they MAY have put in a well and that MAY have tapped into some sort of underground creek which was feeding the pond? It seems unlikely what with the water table being so high to start out with, and how unlikely it would be to put one in precisely where it would disrupt an underground creek...or even that there might BE an underground creek between the lake and the surface.

The only other change is that I no longer have ANY livestock in there so the only drain would be the moose and elk etc. I don't think the thing was built with any special care, it was just a big hole they took all the fill out of.  There are NO rocks over about 1/4 inch and even those are rare. in case that's important.

[flowerbug]

it sounds unlikely at that distance, but hard to be completely sure with things underground and how layers of sediments can form which will act as pipes for great distances.

my guess though is that it is the neighboring trees/bushes and perhaps the ground cover itself in that area as maybe it was mowed or something before you arrived? it's just tough to diagnose such things without knowing the full history or being on-site to look around.

hmm, ok, so there used to be livestock but not now, so whatever brush and grasses that were growing in there before were kept fairly short? to me that could be a large amount of the difference as a brushy grassy field will soak up a lot more water before it would run off into a downhill pond or collection point (and to me this is a good thing and not a bad thing at all).

however, if you want that pond full you may need to line it or use some other method to keep more water in it. since you say you're not short on rain-fall perhaps you can run a line from the house to the pond for any extra rain you don't collect in the rain barrels? or look at how the neighboring land is shaped and reshape it as minimal as possible but in ways that would direct any runoff into that pond?

[reed]

Muskrats and minks don't tunnel in the ground away from water. They just make their little caves along the edges and the entrances can be hard to see, they like to hide them under the weeds. Minks mostly come out at night but muskrats can occasionally be seen making their little waves as they swim. If ya got either one in your pond ya got a problem and if the problem showed up suddenly, that's suspicious.

[kyredneck]

Jan 4, 2020 17:29:54 GMT -5 reed said:

Muskrats and minks don't tunnel in the ground away from water. They just make their little caves along the edges and the entrances can be hard to see, they like to hide them under the weeds. Minks mostly come out at night but muskrats can occasionally be seen making their little waves as they swim. If ya got either one in your pond ya got a problem and if the problem showed up suddenly, that's suspicious.

Hello Reed! Good to see you're still around.

Subterranean crawdads drained my pond. 

(The Little Brown Greasy I got from you years ago has become a family staple, everyone loves it, good canner, makes excellent shuck beans)

[reed]

kyredneck, glad to have you back! yea, the little greasy beans have been one of my favorites for as long as I remember. 

[stone]

Jan 3, 2020 9:43:46 GMT -5 William said:

Something perhaps the roots of these new willows, has disrupted the clay that keeps the water in. Might be tricky.

Exactly my thought as well.
I dug a large goldfish pond at my previous garden... Dug out a spring, had enough room to swim... something like 30 foot by 10 foot...
One day, I went out and the pond was all draining away through the dam. I was able to repair, save the fish... though... it seemed like something that I was going to have to keep an eye on... My pond was shovel dug... but even those ponds dug with heavy equipment have fails.

Whether the willows or other trees... or animals, I'd check the dam see if there isn't water seeping out the bottom.

[prairiegardens]

going to have to wait for the snow to melt and ground to thaw which may take a while. Never having built a pond, I'm not sure how to go about fixing it... I imagine the water is seeping out the bottom as last fall the mud at the bottom of the pond was.... mud. No liquid water left and no visible exit.

[steev]

Prolly needs kaolin to re-line it.

[prairiegardens]

Was wondering about that. I very much doubt there was ever any kaolin used originally, just a dugout with the sand and clay hauled away. I was thinking now would be the time to put in a well, since it would likely need to be no more than about 15 feet to reach water,,,the neighbor's well a couple of miles away is 19 feet and the other neighbor's well iirc is 30 feet as the lake runs beneath the whole area. Or so I'm told. Otoh if I concentrated on catchment...it's just that it really is needed for watering anything I might want to grow in that area, from chard to chickens. So may need to learn about kaolin...there is a manufacturer somewhere in Saskatchewan I think within a couple to three hundred miles.

actually not kaolin, but bentonite..  not sure exactly what the chemical composition is for either so no idea how they differ, but bentonite is used all over the oil patch, including for establishing  "borrow ponds" and for fixing leaky ponds. It's also used, apparently, for filtering wine. versatile clay.

[stone]

Ponds dug with heavy equipment usually have a packed core of the exiting material. Not sure that hauling in clay from outside sources makes all that much sense... Especially with such a high water table...

My understanding is that comercially dug wells usually have a PVC and cement lining...
If I had as high a water table as you describe... I'd be tempted to go at it with a shovel, buckets, and ladder.

I've dug holes deeper than that without buckets.... Just tossing the soil out of the hole with the shovel... Getting out of the hole becomes problematic....

[prairiegardens]

getting INTO the hole is problematic, much less getting out. I'm not the agile goat I once was and haven't been for some time I've been thinking of a number of alternatives lately... looking at putting some pigs in there to reseal the surface..supposedly that works although not sure about the angle of the walls, may be too steep, I have to investigate just how that gets set up.

Another alternative is to more or less ignore it and put a dew pond in higher in the property and closer to where I need the water atm, there is a shallow depression about the right size and it would be really interesting to see if it would work. I have an abundance of straw which I could use as the insulating layer, it is left over from a shelter I buildt for the horses and I've been reluctant to use it on growing surfaces as I am 95% sure it was all dried down with glyphosate. Even after 10 years no grass is volunteering on it.

It's just a bit anxiety provoking to think I might get someone in there to "do something" about the pond and it doesn't work or works only briefly. Since I don't know WHY it drained it's difficult to know what would stop it from draining again, which is why I appreciate any and all thoughts about it.