#12 Pond North, Dredging Update

We started to drain and clean out the pond this past Monday. We will also expand the pond towards #11 fairway, trying to have a little more water storage capacity in the pond. This pond was built in 1987 when we did a renovation to the North course. It has been drained a few times over the years to do some bank work or when we built the wall around #12 green. We have never removed the silt and organic matter that has accumulated in the bottom of the pond for the last 36 years. We had estimated the silt to be about 2' deep, however we were wrong on that estimation, it is closer to 4' deep. Our plan is to dig a big hole in the native area right of #6 North and put all of the muck in this hole. Elder Corporation is the company that is doing our work. They dug the first hole and it is now full of muck. This morning we are digging the second hole. Hopefully this will be big enough to hold the remainder of the material. In the spring we will try to cover this muck area up with material dug out of the holes. A pad was built out of good material to hold the backhoe, the dozer then pushes the muck to a small hole in front of the backhoe. He then loads the 2 trucks and they haul the muck to the bury pit.

All of this work takes a tremendous amount of time to get set up and making it operate smoothly. Once the muck is removed then the banks of the new pond will be graded, we will install rough irrigatio heads and then sod will be installed. Some of this work may be delayed until spring. It is all weather dependent. Here is a photo of the muck being pushed.

Digging the new hole.

I will be updating this blog weekly to show you the progress that is being made. As soon as we have completed the work on #12 North we will move to the irrigation pond on #2 South and do the exact same operation to clean it out and expand it.