Pond Leak....Again

It appears that my post back in the end of April about the pond overflow being fixed was a bit premature.  Something changed underground very abruptly last week when the remaining frost finally came out, and the hole in the bottom of the pond where the old overflow pipe was buried opened back up.

Last fall when we dug out the old riser on the pipe, the stub of the 15" steel culvert was dug back into the pond back, smashed, folded back over its self, and buried under 5,000 lbs of concrete and about 2' of silt.  Water however has an amazing way of sneaking through even the smallest of crevasses, and apparently managed to find a path under the concrete slab, and began to quickly erode a channel under it and find its way into the pipe.

The leak became so bad late last week that it was obvious we had no choice but to fix it.  The leak almost completely emptied the pond (about 1.5 million gallons) in only 3 days.  After the pond was empty, we rented an excavator this week, reburied the concrete block in silt, and then dug about an 8' deep hole in the cartpath on hole 8 to remove a section of the pipe and thoroughly fill and pack the void with clay.

Pond leakage at the end of April (just a trickle)

Pond leakage 2 weeks later

Digging the old pipe out in the middle of the cartpath on hole 8

We struggle enough to keep our irrigation pond full of water throughout the summer, allowing this leak to continue throughout the season would have made that an almost impossible task.  While the current fix should prevent any further leakage this summer, the real solution will be to go back in late this fall after the course is closed and dig out the entire 50' section of pipe and refill the entire void with clay.