Pond Construction

Dry basins that capture peak stormwater and release it at the controlled rates the drainage study sets — the permitting requirement behind most commercial pond work. We excavate to the design section, build embankments in compacted lifts, and hold the grades that make the stage-storage numbers real, because a basin an inch shy of design volume is a compliance problem, not a rounding error. Where the plans have the basin serving as a sediment trap during construction, we build it first and convert it to final section at close-out.

Permanent-pool ponds built to the liner, embankment, and outfall details in the civil design. Holding a permanent pool raises the bar: where native soils will not seal, the design may call for a compacted clay liner placed in moisture-conditioned lifts or a geomembrane system — and liner subgrade preparation, placement, and protection from equipment damage are where that scope is won or lost. We build the liner the plans specify and shape the shoreline and maintenance access the long-term owner will live with.

Ranch and agricultural ponds sited, shaped, keyed, and compacted so they hold water in West Texas soil — working infrastructure for livestock and land management, built with the same equipment and compaction discipline as our commercial basins. Good stock pond work starts with reading the ground: where the drainage actually concentrates, whether the soil on site can seal a pool, and where an embankment can be keyed into material that will hold it. We tell landowners plainly what their ground can and cannot do before dirt moves.

The embankment is the dam, and we build it like one: foundation stripped of vegetation and topsoil, a keyway trench cut into competent material so the fill locks into the ground beneath it, and embankment material placed in thin, moisture-conditioned lifts compacted to specification. Where the design designates select material for the core, that material goes in the core — not whatever the last cut produced. Slopes are dressed to the design section so they can be stabilized and maintained for the long haul.

The outlet works are the machine that makes a detention pond perform: risers, orifice plates, outfall pipe, and the concrete structures that meter flow at the engineered rates. Backfill around outlet pipes is a classic failure path — water travels along a poorly compacted pipe zone and works the embankment from inside — so we compact it accordingly. Emergency spillways are cut and armored to the design so the storm bigger than the pond passes around the embankment instead of over it.

If your project adds impervious cover — roofs, parking, paving — the local drainage criteria almost certainly require you to detain the difference, and the drainage study your civil engineer prepares will say how much. Whether that detention takes the form of a surface pond, an underground system, or a shared regional facility is a design decision driven by land value, soils, and the reviewing jurisdiction. What we can tell you from the construction side: a surface pond is usually the most economical volume to build and the most forgiving to maintain, and building it early lets it work for you as sediment control through construction. Bring the question to us before the site plan is frozen and the pond can be placed where it helps the earthwork balance instead of hurting it.

Three things, in order: the right material, the right compaction, and the right details. Tight clays compacted near optimum moisture in thin lifts form a seal that sandy or caliche-heavy profiles never will — which is why the geotechnical picture decides whether a pond seals naturally or needs a compacted clay or geomembrane liner. Compaction is not negotiable either way: loose fill leaks through its own voids. And the details are where ponds quietly fail — keyways that lock the embankment to native ground, outlet pipe zones compacted so water cannot travel the pipe, spillways armored so the overflow path does not erode. A pond that leaks is not bad luck; it is one of these three, skipped.

On commercial and energy projects, the pond is designed by the civil engineer — volume, stage-storage, outlet rates, liner, and spillway all come from the drainage study and the stamped plans. Verification is independent of us: the owner's testing laboratory checks embankment and liner compaction lift by lift, and the finished basin is reviewed and accepted by the engineer and the jurisdiction whose criteria it satisfies. TerraTek builds to the design and schedules the work around those verification points. For private stock ponds without an engineered design, the same logic scales down: we build to accepted practice, tell you what the soil can support, and recommend an engineer when the embankment height or downstream risk warrants one.

Both work, and we price both. Standalone pond packages make sense on ranches, on developments where the civil scope is already split, and on energy sites that need a basin added to a working facility — we mobilize, build the basin to the design, and leave. Bundling earns its keep on active developments: the pond's cut feeds the site's fill plan, the basin serves as sediment control while our own crews grade around it, and the outlet ties into storm systems we are installing anyway. One contractor holding those connections is the difference between a pond on the critical path and a pond quietly finished ahead of it. The bundled version lives under turnkey site development.

For a commercial or energy project: the grading and drainage sheets, the pond details — section, liner, outlet structure, spillway — and the geotechnical report. For a stock pond: the property location, roughly what you want the pond to do, and anything you know about the soil; we can assess the rest on the ground. Send it through our contact page with your timeline. We respond with an approach and price that state the material and liner assumptions plainly, flag any gap between the design volume and what the site's soil will support, and lay out how the pond sequences against the rest of your dirt work.