Lakes

I love to fish, so one of the things I attracted me to Chaplin Bend Farm was the small lake in the central valley of the lower part of the farm.  Here's a satellite map showing the location of the existing lake:

The dam for the existing lake was not particularly well constructed:  the spillways are inadequate and it has almost no freeboard (dam height above normal water level), so it is easily overtopped.  It appears to have at least one very small leak.  In addition, the dam and shoreline of the lake have been damaged by cattle and muskrats.  But the lake seems to hold water well--I've never seen it anything but full.

In addition to the existing lake, it appears that there are sites higher up the same valley for one or two additional lakes of similar size.  (In theory I could build one huge lake that would fill the entire valley, but cost and government regulations make that unfeasible.)  Here's what I have in mind:

The upper lake would have two embankments: one to the east and one to the south.  We would design that lake so that the overflow would go south into the other lakes rather than east into the river.  The dam for the middle lake would be placed just above the tail-waters for existing lake.  While we're at it, we're planning to repair and raise the existing dam, which will enlarge the existing lake a bit and flood the cattle and muskrat damage along the shoreline.  The overall result should be maybe 6 acres of more-or-less continuous water, which would be terrific!

I've been working with a civil engineer who specializes in dam construction to plan the project.  Yesterday he was on site doing borings to test the structure of the existing dam and to verify that we have sufficient clay in the soil to build the new dams.  Here he is at work on the existing dam :

The borings revealed plenty of clay, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Next week a surveyor is going to survey the entire valley and produce a contour map with one-foot intervals.  We'll use that to help place and size the dams and determine more precisely the size of the lakes.  Also in the next week or so my engineer will do the math on the watershed and water volumes to make sure that there is enough flow to keep the three lakes full.  More on those tasks later.