We suspected and have confirmed that water is leaking under the dam of the pond on #14 and making its way to 16 fairway. There is (was!) a spot in 16 fairway where we could actually see water percolating up to the surface. That spot was about three and a half FEET lower than the surface of the pond on 14. Two weeks ago we put blue dye into the pond on 14. Within minutes the water that was surfacing in 16 fairway was blue. Our suspicions were confirmed that the water was leaving the lake UNDER the dam and flooding the fairway.
The only real "right" fix for this is to fix the dam. Our Long Range Plan calls for rebuilding the pond on 14, resizing it to include the drainage that crosses 14 rough to the bridge on 16, and in the process lowers the pond by two feet. That is an expensive fix, and not one that we really want to undertake in the middle of our prime golf season.
As a temporary fix we are taking three actions:
1: Drainage will be installed between the cart path and the pond on #16 to intercept the leakage before it reaches 16 fairway.
2: We have packed mud and muck into the spot on the dam we believed was the source of the leak. This has already shown great results.
3: We will add drainage across 16 fairway to replace existing drainage that is apparently no longer working. This way, if water continues to leak and gets past our new drains it should still be taken off by the new fairway drains.
This is at best a temporary solution. "Temporary" might be 5 or 10 years, or it might all come apart next year - it all depends on how well our patches to the dam hold. But, for now, this should allow us to get 16 fairway dried up, and we think based on the things we saw today that it will dry up rather quickly. This video shows how much water was running in the drainage ditch that we excavated between the cart path and the pond. All of this water was previously making its way to 16 fairway.
I'm not saying this fairway was wet, but this guy showed up after we got the leak stopped.
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