Spillways and overflow structures, the failure we see most
A spillway is the pressure relief valve on your dam, and when it starts eroding it does not stop on its own. Water finds the cut, the cut deepens, and each storm moves more soil than the last. Overflow pipes fail two ways: the pipe itself rusts or cracks, or water starts running along the OUTSIDE of the pipe where it passes through the dam, which is the dangerous one because it quietly hollows the embankment. We rebuild emergency spillways to grade with armor stone, replace failed riser and barrel structures, and install anti-seep collars so water stops taking the shortcut.
Leaking ponds and the honest diagnosis
A pond that will not hold water is leaking through the bottom, through the dam, or around a structure, and those are three different repairs at three different prices. Bottom leaks usually mean the clay seal was never continuous or a sand seam runs under the basin, and the fix is scarifying and recompacting good clay, sometimes with imported material or bentonite. Dam leaks show up as wet ground or a spring at the downstream toe and need core work. Structure leaks need the pipe addressed. We read the water level history and the ground before quoting, because guessing here wastes real money.
Dredging and cleanouts
Every Indiana pond is slowly filling in. Field runoff, bank erosion, and decades of leaves turn a ten foot pond into a five foot pond, and shallow water means warm water, weed mats, and winterkill on your fish. Dredging restores the depth and the volume, and it is usually a fraction of what a new pond costs. We can dredge wet with long reach equipment or drain and dig dry when the outlet allows it, and we always talk through where the spoil goes before we start, because sediment placement is half the job.
Dam repair and the things that kill a dam
Three things end dams in Indiana. Trees, because roots rot and leave channels and a windthrown tree takes a chunk of embankment with it. Muskrats and groundhogs, because their tunnels run straight through the core. And erosion at the water line where wave action eats a notch. None of these are emergencies on the day you notice them and all of them become emergencies eventually. We remove woody growth, backfill and compact burrow damage, rebuild eroded faces, and rip-rap the wave zone so it stops happening.
Bank erosion, rip-rap and shoreline work
Bare banks feed the pond the sediment that fills it. Stabilizing the shoreline with graded stone, reshaping over-steep banks to a mowable slope, and building the beaches, fishing points and access lanes people actually use turns a hole in the ground into part of the property. This work also protects everything else you just paid to fix.
New pond construction
When the ground is right, a new pond is one of the best improvements a rural property can carry. We evaluate the soil and the watershed first, because both have to agree: enough clay to seal, enough drainage area to keep it full, not so much that every storm blows out the spillway. Then the dam gets built in lifts with a compacted core, the basin gets its depth zones for fish and swimming, and the spillway gets sized for the water it will actually see. Built right, a pond outlives the person who ordered it.
Watershed, permits and the conversations worth having early
Ponds sit inside rules. A dam over a certain height, a pond built in or fed by a stream, or work touching a county regulated drain can all pull in the county surveyor, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, or the Army Corps. We flag which conversations your project needs before dirt moves, and we would rather lose a week to a permit than build something that has to come back out.
Farm ponds, livestock and irrigation
A pond that waters cattle needs different thinking than a pond that holds bluegill: hardened access points so the herd does not tear the banks apart, or a gravity line to a tank so they never enter the water at all. Irrigation draws need depth that survives August. We build for the job the pond actually does.