What will be the depth that water can sink to the ground? Currently there is a pond in one acre of land which is of 4 feet depth. If the pond is filled with water it is expected that some percent of the water will be absorbed by the ground under the pond. To what depth will the water will be absorbed by the ground? The type of soil is clay type.

The reason for asking the question is, there is a shrimp pond which is infected with a virus and it has been observed that in next few days the adjacent pond is infected with the virus and like that whole area is infected which is causing huge loss for the farmers. We are looking for the option to restrict the transmit of water from the adjacent ponds by placing a plastic/HDPE boundary kind of the thing for x feet depth so that our pond water doesn't get make contact with adjacent pond's water.

I am interested to know the depth water can sink to the ground, to ask my query in a different way.. take a 4 ft dry pond and let's assume water is fully filled and the pond is kept ideal for a week. After a week how much depth the water would have sinked, can it be 20 ft or 30 ft or 40 ft or..?
One quick and dirty solution may be to lower the virus-pond level and raise the new-pond level ... so the flow should be from the new-pond to the virus-pond.

Soil being clay may mean the flow is happening below the soil ... if the virus-pond is in contact with the unit below the clay you may already have widespread contamination.