Pond construction in Norman changes with which side of town you are on. West Norman is prairie ground. East Norman, out around Lake Thunderbird, holds some 6,000 acres of lake and Cross Timbers forest. That east side is where most pond work happens. It is post oak and blackjack oak on rolling, cut up ground, with sandstone running close under the surface. We bring a Cat D6 dozer and a 30,000 lb excavator up from Ada, about 50 miles southeast.
Horse places and hobby farms drive most of the pond calls out that way. Owners want stock water, or a fishing hole close to the house. We have built four ponds on one ongoing ranch project near Sulphur, so this is regular work for us. If you want the wider picture of how we build ponds start to finish, that page covers it. Moving machines from Ada costs real money, so we favor full scope jobs here over an afternoon of dozer time. Call (580) 344-7473 for a free estimate.
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Cross Timbers woodland sits on coarse, sandy soils. That is the ground under most of east Norman, and sand will not hold a pond. Clay is what seals one, and out here clay is not a given. So the first move on a Norman site is test holes. The excavator opens the ground in the pond bowl and along the dam line. We look at what comes up and how deep the sandstone runs. Good clay on the property gets mined and used. If there is none, we build a clay core in the dam and haul clay in for the bowl. That one answer moves the price more than anything else.
Watershed sizing matters more here than on flat country. Cross Timbers ground rolls and cuts, so water gathers fast in the draws. Size the drainage too small and the pond sits low in a dry year. Size it too big and the first hard rain goes to work on the spillway. We read the draw above the site and figure the acres feeding it. Sediment is the other half. One survey put sediment coming into Lake Thunderbird near 393 acre-feet a year. That dirt moves off this same ground, so a new pond catches its share. The spoil coming out gets shaped on site, which is the dirt work end of the job.
Norman is bigger than most people picture. The city took in 174 square miles through the 1960s, and now covers about 178 square miles of land. So a lot of country acreage sits inside city limits. A pond in a mapped flood area needs a city floodplain permit. Norman defines development to include excavation and filling, which is exactly what a pond job is. Public Works Stormwater Division handles that permit through the city portal. Flooding here comes off the Canadian and Little Rivers, plus creeks like Bishop, Imhoff, Merkle and Brookhaven. Check your flood zone before anything gets dug. We cover the same ground for clearing and dirt jobs around town.
The state side is simpler for most ponds. Oklahoma treats a dam as jurisdictional at 25 feet or more in height, or 50 acre-feet of storage. A dam rated high hazard falls under the Oklahoma Water Resources Board at any size. Most stock and fishing ponds in Cleveland County sit well under those numbers. The state already tracks more than 4,700 dams that big. Water use is its own question. OWRB requires a permit for every use of water in Oklahoma except domestic use. What counts as domestic use depends on the job, so call OWRB before we set a dam line. A pond fed by a live creek raises more questions than one dug on a dry draw.
More about the service itself is on our Pond Construction page, and everything we do around town is on the Norman service-area page.
Free, no-obligation estimates throughout Cleveland County.
(580) 344-7473Answers specific to pond construction work around Norman. Something else on your mind? Call us.
Cedar taking the pasture, a pad to build, an old house to take down, or a pond you have been thinking about for years? Call or send the form. We come look at the property with you, and the estimate is free, from the owner who runs the machines.
Tell us about your property and we'll get back to you fast.
