Number 7 Water Feature is Back!!!!

As all of you golfers and homeowners that live on or near hole #7 know the water feature on this hole was drained.  The cause was a fissure in the limestone that opened up to an underground stream.  I am sorry that it took so long to get the water feature back, but it was a precarious process,  We had to wait until the area quit leaking water to determine what the problem was.

The Problem Hole is 2 feet wide

After we found the problem we called in some experts on the subject for advice on fixing the problem. ( I personally have never dealt with a problem such as this before.)  So we spoke with the geology experts who were very helpful and very enthusiastic about their profession.  Their recommendation was to expose the hole and fill with a material called Bentonite.  Bentonite is a clay byproduct of mining and it is devoid of water.  When it comes in contact with water it swells to about 3-5 times its size and creates a clay barrier layer or expands to clog holes whichever is needed.
The pond was as low as it was going to get and we were in the middle of the dry season (late October).  We Brought in an Excavator to search to find the problem.  The more we dug the wetter the hole got.  We were running two 2 inch trash pumps to keep the water out and we could barely keep up with the water coming out of the fissure I took 3 attempts with the excavator to clean up the hole.  At this point we were getting out of the dry season and having to schedule around weather events, but we finally got close enough to the fissure to attempt to plug it with the Bentonite.
link to a video of the underground stream in action

I was the lucky guinea pig that had to get in to plug the hole.  It is very unnerving getting into a big hole in the ground that you are unsure of how long it will be under your feet.

Thats me down in a 12' deep unstable hole.  My wife hates me for doing this.

There I am to the right trying to cover the
Bentonite with as much material as I can to pack it down.  Notice the safety line running to me from the surface.  After a day or so of watching the progress of the hole we got a rainfall that overtook the hole and did not drain out.  That was when I was fairly confident that we had a successful repair.  We called in the excavator to finish the back fill before the water level overtook the area with another rain event.  We have been filling the pond for about 2 weeks now.  We were running a 2" line @ 125 PSI for 16 hours /day.  That equates to a lot of freaking water.
We have currently shut off the water feed to the pond with heavy rains expected this week.  We are only 2' from the full level and I think that the rains will get us there by next week.
There is a possibility that this problem could happen again.  It happened 15 years ago.  It may not happen for another 15 years or it may happen tomorrow.  With the underground stream I am confident that the issue could arise again.  but for now our water feature does not look like this any more