Erosion remediation, thoughts?

We have a problem with our big pond.

Ten or so years ago, my then neighbor decided his property would sell easier without a pond, and filled his in. He ruined a well designed pond based drainage system. Giant pond A had an overflow pipe that runs under our street. This pipe fed another big pond B which had an underground pipe feeding his tiny pond, C. His overflow was also directed underground into my medium pond, D. My pond is shared next door, then it overflows into a drainage ditch which joins the water shed traveling to the river a couple miles away.

So neighbor C filed in his pond. Pond B now has no spillway. it blows out. The owner of pond B spent some funds to raise the walls of his pond higher, eventually after several blow outs, spending more money, putting in an overflow pipe that simply drains over some gravel he had to purchase, which has become a ditch, off of his property. He did what he could to fix his own land.

Pond C no longer exists, soooo... Now there is a lovely V shaped groove that carries all the run off across that yard, over mine, into my pond. This V deepens as the years progress. During the rainy seasons, I often have a river up to ten feet wide dividing my property. Erosion is so delightful. When we moved here the pond was at least five feet deep. now it might have spots that are two feet deep. Sigh.





We have tried several things over the years to slow down some of the erosion. A pile of bricks have guided the erosion on one side of our new gulley. A now a nature huglekutured log is to the left. We've put bricks, bigger rocks, and concrete leftovers down in the bottom of the gully, in an attempt to catch the sediment, and stop the lengthning of the gully. They have been washed out by the floods. I planted some river cane to try to stablize the area. It has survived and spread a bit, but not much erosion control has occured. I strung a length of fence to catch leaves and sediment. To try and slow down the water. It got flattened.



While designed for a different application, we will try spiling.



We have a couple of dead willow that need to come down, But that does not help to make a live spiling. I have one willow in the garden that did not get dug out last spring. It can be cut back, in hopes that it will regrow for basket making supplies. Anyone use black willow for basket making? We'll see if that works out...

That is not enough. Maybe some wigelia stems and privet too. They will both try to resprout. As shown by my tiered grden beds. Hmmm. Still not enough...

Where oh where will we find the materials for this? We go to neighbor A. Can we chop any willow down? Well... maybe. He has these willows over here, that the beavers took down. Wait. What? He has beavers?! He doesn't have enough trees to support beavers! And maybe that one willow can go too. Cool!



But that won't be enough to finish the project. My greedy eyes wander to other neighbor's yards. And the line of giant willow trees over there. That neighbor says NOPE the wife planted those. Sigh. (We actually just asked for a few branches, not the trees!) Then the wife texts me to say we could take all the trees out! She was gonna have someone take them out anyhow. WELL! How fortuituos!

Another problem is the old pipe from the defunct system still drains for several days after big storms. I hope to line the path of its travel with river rock to help it out. I have no budget for this. So it may never happen.

Hmmm... I did find this one, so maybe my first flood won't take out our hard work.

Erosion occurs when the speed of the water is fast enough to carry soil particles or rocks along.
I had a flood last week that swept 11/2 inch rock off my roads and through the neighbours property.
Some points to consider;
- can the initial dam C be redug? It would only slow down the initial flush of water, but if it worked before it may work again.
- Can the slope the water is running down be modified to slow water down?  With weirs, steps etc

Hey John. I was not clear. Dam C is now stable. My problem occurs when his pond reaches the overflow pipe and releases the water overland. Tomorrow is day 3 of light rain. Maybe we'll see a trickle to film for you.

EDIT: Sorry, I am wrong. Pond C was filled in and does not exist. It is not on my property, and isn't near the current overland water path. A damn there wouldn't be any help.

New pictures, New info.

Pond B was rebuilt, and is totally stable. Pond B has an overflow pipe to drain the storm water.

Here is the overflow water from the pipe, traversing the gravel, rock lined ditch.


There is a whirlpool here. An apparent drain pipe.



Which apparently feeds my pond here, as it is truely gushing. So maybe he connected to the old now non existing pond's overflow pipe.



After the whirlpool drain is about 20 eet of dryish land. Then topography drops a few inches, and soggy land gathers seeping water into this trickle.



Then it flows to our pond as shown here.

The only suggestion I can make is that you need a lot of rock dams and brush dams.

Each fence post needs a rock dam where the fence line is threatened.

Do you have a soil conservation office near you? Years ago they came out to our homestead to help us with the placement of a pond.

I am not sure if this is the same agency though it might be worth looking into:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/conservation-basics/natural-resource-concerns/soil

Thanks for chiming in Anne. The fence is on the far side of property C. Not our fence. I've considered suggesting brushdams to the new renters. They couldn't be bothered to mow back there. I don't think that they would be interested. The landowners have looked at the place twice in the last 5 years. They gave instructions to a crew to knock down plants well onto our property. Hunny got involved. Saved my plants. I'm so glad he was home!

There is only 15 feet between our property line and the gully. Bricks will be tossed in the entrance of the gully to fill it in. The bricks will not wash out? We'll see with the upcoming spring thunderstorms.

The spiling solution has been abandoned by the power that is. Now we will pound our willow posts into our property line to hopefully grow willows and somehow slow down the water. Maybe put down a brush dam.

I have seen rocks as big as basketballs wash down our county road.

From what I read it seems like one of the big problems is the drainage pipes from the property owner who filled in his pond.  Is that correct? Is there a way to get him to remove them or let someone else do that?

Going back to a question I put, "- Can the slope the water is running down be modified to slow water down?  With weirs, steps etc"
Basically the system seems to have reverted back to an almost natural system before the ponds were built.
But with the water path concentrated to a narrow path..

Ooops. This project has been put on hold. Sorta. We did get a line of willow tree sized stakes put in. As insurance, I also added a line of willow stakes. I am surprised that 9 of 14 of the tree size variety are still showing signs of life. None of the stakes were watered beyond rainfall. Not all the short stakes survived either.

Then.


A bit later


Now.

Anne Miller wrote:From what I read it seems like one of the big problems is the drainage pipes from the property owner who filled in his pond.  Is that correct?

I'd call this a small problem. I would still love to line that portion with river rock. However, that part of it is within the pond um, basin? There is a bit of erosion, but the edge of the pond basin is above it. If this system were removed, it would make the other major problem worse. Much worse.

John C Daley wrote:"- Can the slope the water is running down be modified to slow water down?  With weirs, steps etc"

We intend to add a brush dam on the far side of our new line of willow trees. It might be as tall as 2 feet? I see that I have to weed next door cocklburs soon. Must make some smelly weed tea to drown those seeds that are forming.

I'm hoping as fall nears, the guys will get back out there to place some bricks in the washed out "gully".

Oh, and this is the "pond" in our seasonal drought. The fall thunder storms start up near the end of September. There's water in less than a quarter of the pond's footprint. This is because of all the silt that has washed into it, raising the floor level. Hmmm... Maybe some trash removal is possible...

Willows have this wonderful ability to take hold just about anywhere there is a bit of water. I like the idea of making a living erosion check out of willows.

I have a few projects that I have on hold myself that I need to revisit haha.

Seems like you’re dealing with quite a bit of water, And I imagine that your ultimate solution will be similar to that which caused this problem for you in the first place. You might not be able to build a pond on your neighbors property, but you might be able to build a series of retainment pools to hold the water and slow down its drainage.  Where I live, there’s a lot of hilly Farm ground.  Between terracing and retainment pools we control the erosion. Most of these pools are built by building earthworks at low points that make a U-shaped into the hillside. Whereas  the kind of dirt used on a permanent pond is important, it’s less important in these sort of pools where you simply want to slow drainage. As such most of these pools in my area are ephemeral And only exist during times of excess rainfall

As a point of reference from an earlier comment, in Australia and South Africa (and presumably other places), the word dam references a body of water, so an international discussion can certainly be confusing.

I would think a starting point would be to look at the topography of the land.  Google Earth Pro can give you the aerial view.  Are there topographic maps of the area that could be useful?  I know there are services available to get that information, but that isn't ideal for a low budget project.

When it comes to water, my PDC instructors hammered it into us to slow, spread, and sink water as much as we are able.  The higher water is stored / slowed, the more its downstream path can be modified / planned / contained.

How good are the relations with the neighbours?  Not ideal from the sounds of it, at least on one side, but are they willing to sit down and discuss the situation at least?  Since the current situation was caused by an upstream modification, perhaps there is some openness to looking at possible solutions.  Failing that, or perhaps in addition to, does your local municipality have any resources with respect to watershed management?  As mentioned earlier, perhaps there's an organization like a water conservation district that could offer some guidance and possibly assist with remediation.

If you take unilateral action that backs things up onto the neighbour's property(ies) upstream of you, you may simply have moved the issue and potentially sparked a feud.

It's in the interest of everyone downstream to do the best we can to manage potential issues further upstream ideally before they become issues.

To a degree, I'd suggest these questions are rhetorical...more food for thought than me seeking answers.  I hope these thoughts are useful.

Mark wrote:You might not be able to build a pond on your neighbors property, but you might be able to build a series of retainment pools to hold the water and slow down its drainage.

That would work great in a different situation. However, there are only 12 feet between my property line and the "gully" that leads to my pond. Bummer.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

Mark wrote:You might not be able to build a pond on your neighbors property, but you might be able to build a series of retainment pools to hold the water and slow down its drainage.

That would work great in a different situation. However, there are only 12 feet between my property line and the "gully" that leads to my pond. Bummer.

I'm no hydrology expert, but that might be enough space for a check dam or two to slow the flow.  At least, that is what I might consider.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:... This is because of all the silt that has washed into it, raising the floor level. Hmmm... Maybe some trash removal is possible...

Absolutely. Digging out a bunch of the silt may help part of the problems, but you need to have a good plan as to where that silt will get put!

At least one of the pipes in your pictures looks *way* too small for the quantity of water that needed to flow.

If the water is flowing fast, but only seasonally, planting some really deep rooted, tough plants might help to slow the erosion. Just putting brush down to absorb some of the silt and water force, my help, but the water *has* to go somewhere. It will either be a narrow deep gully, or a wide shallower path. Think in terms of the volume of water and what that volume looks like with different cross sections?

I have read recently that as the temperature rises in places, the air holds more moisture, so the rainfall numbers will go up, and will tend to do so in big clumps rather than Scotch Mist for a week.

I picked up somebody's trash last week, my treasure—three large clumps of fountain grass.


Picture fron here.

We divided the clumps and planted some on the north side of the willow tree line. I am pretending it will do the same actions as vevitier grass. Though I think fountain grass will produce seeds. Being on the north side of the willow trees, I wonder if there will be too much shade. I did reserve several of the clumps that were divided and planted a row in full sun to act as a propagation area. I hope to use the grass as a source of mulch.