You can't fix stupid!  I had a meeting with guy one time that had two ponds.  One was at the bottom of a hill, the other was about 100 yards up the hill and 12 feet higher in elevation than the first pond.  I even shot the elevations with a laser level just to make sure.  The guy wanted a ditch from the lower pond to the upper pond so that he could fill the upper pond.  I thought I was mis-understanding him, but he swore up and down that if I put a ditch in between the ponds, water would travel from the low pond, up the hill, to the higher pond.   I finally just walked off...I never could convince him that water would not run uphill.