Pond Silted In or Holding Less Water in Mauriceville, TX

What to do right now

1. 1Rule out the dam first. Walk the downstream toe of the levee on a dry day and look for wet ground, seepage, a slump in the face or water boiling below it. Any of those means the dam is failing, not silting, and it means keeping trucks and equipment off the levee until it has been looked at. Any pipeline marker or old lease road near the pond means an 811 locate first.
2. 2Decide what the pond is for. A stock or fishing pond and a crawfish pond are different builds, and the answer changes what a cleanout means and how it is priced.
3. 3Look at what is above the pond. If the pasture has gone back to yaupon and tallow, the pond is taking leaf litter and bare-ground soil with every rain, and that has to be part of the plan.
4. 4Probe the bottom from the bank. On old family ponds the soft layer is often black and half organic, and it is almost always thicker than the surface suggests.
5. 5Dig out any old pictures the family has of the pond, and add a few of your own at its lowest. The original bank line and the old depth are usually somewhere in a photo album, and they tell us more than a single visit can.

Why this happens in Mauriceville, TX

Mauriceville is unincorporated pine country in northern Orange County, low and flat on heavy clay that drains slowly and holds water without a liner, which is why stock ponds are on so many tracts and why there is often more than one to a property. Land here is held by families for generations, and the ground between the ponds has frequently gone from pasture back to yaupon and tallow. Drainage works south through Cow Bayou toward the Neches and the Sabine, and Harvey and Imelda both put more water through this corner of the county than the old ponds and levees were built to pass. Crawfish ponds are part of the agricultural picture in this area alongside cattle ponds. This stretch of the Gulf Coast takes around sixty inches of rain a year, and Orange County burn bans and TCEQ outdoor burning rules govern any brush that comes off the pond banks during a cleanout.