Try contacting your country extension agent, he/she is probably your best bet.

Must be a county thing. My neighbor has talked to someone (I don't have a clue who but it is a govt agency) and he said they came out, looked at the property, took GPS coords, then did a study on how much watershed his property received. I believe he said the next step was to dig down to see if what below was good for water retention.

When I dug mine, I talked to several people who had received assistance from their different government agencies. These where all over the country, so it might be different where you are located. They received grants if they did certain things with their projects. In every case, it cost them more to do what was required then what they received in funding. Some of them mentioned having to maintain the land, or keep it in a certain condition or have to repay the funding.

I quickly realized that the thing I like about having my land the best, is not having to do what somebody else tells me to do with it. I just took my time, took out all the trees and kept digging until it was done. Took me two years to get it dug, another year to fill and another year after that until it started to look nice.

To me this seems like the most sensible way to go!

Sure is, if you already have a dozer as Eddie does.