Silted-in ponds cleaned back out, and dams and levees repaired where they’ve slumped, leaked or been cut through by a washout.
Ponds, dams and the ground around them are frequently regulated, and the rules are not intuitive. Depending on what your pond is connected to, work on it can involve state dam safety requirements, federal wetland and waters jurisdiction, or conditions attached to a cost-share or conservation agreement. Excavating in or near regulated waters without authorisation is a federal matter, not a local one. We will raise this before we quote, and if there’s any doubt the determination comes before the machine. See our disclaimer.
Ponds silt in. Runoff brings sediment, the edges creep in, vegetation establishes in the shallows, and over twenty or thirty years a pond becomes a marsh. Cleaning it out means excavating the accumulated sediment back out and re-establishing the depth and the edge.
Slumping or sloughing on the downstream face.
Erosion and washouts from overtopping or from an undersized spillway.
Beaver and muskrat do real structural harm to farm pond dams around here.
trees on a dam are a problem, because the root channels become seepage paths when the tree dies.
We can repair and reshape a farm pond dam. We are not engineers, we don’t design dams, and we don’t work on anything that falls under state dam safety regulation without the appropriate engineering and approvals in place first. A dam failure is not a bad day, it’s other people’s property downstream. If your structure is large, if it impounds a stream, or if you don’t know which it is, get it assessed before you get it repaired.
Late summer and autumn, when the water is at its lowest. Working in high water is slower, messier and more expensive.
Spread on the property, somewhere you agree in advance. We don’t haul it off, and there is usually more of it than people expect, plan the spoil area before we start.
Possibly, and it depends on what the pond is connected to and how big the structure is. We’ll raise it at the site visit. Confirm with the relevant agency before work starts, we’re contractors, not the permit office.
No. New impoundments involve design, siting and permitting that are outside what we take on.
Generally yes. Roots create channels through the structure, and when the tree dies or blows over those channels become seepage paths. It’s worth getting looked at.
Call and you get John Williams, not an answering service and not a dispatcher. If it’s after hours or a Sunday, send the form and you’ll have a text back and a callback first thing.
