Fiddling with a drainage surface

[PaulHuffman]

What's the most efficient workflow for fixing small areas in a filled LIdar surface when you find leaks that are sending the stream flows the wrong way? Like a road bed that is blocking flow but I know there is a culvert.  In this case, it's the opposite: I want to build a dike to keep flow accumulation or a cost distance line from jumping out of a ditch.

Before, did I do something like create a little polygon the shape of my dike, then set the value to the desired top elevation, then use Polygon to Raster to make a dike raster with cell size the same as my fill surface, then run a con something like FixedRas = Con(DikeRas,DikeRas,FillRas)  ?

Or does it work better to use the dike polygon as a mask and process the fill raster somehow.  Or does it work better to run the dike polygon through Polygon to Points, then set the value in the points, then go back to raster< and run the Con?

Or is there a better way that I'm not seeing?

[AndrewMoffitt]

edit: I just saw this question was from 2014!!!!

I am imaging a scenario where you have road side ditches that are 'jumping' across, but you need it to stay in the ditch until your mapped culvert.

Your method of creating a wall is my preferred method. I'll use a road center polyline, apply an arbitrarily high elevation (1000') and convert it to raster (ensure snap raster and cell size are based off of your source elevation raster). I'll then use my culverts as cutlines. If your raster has sinks, make sure the fill command is not set to 0, but rather an actual limit that is less than your wall height.

You should be able to now have flow stay in the ditch and run 'through' the road at your culvert cutline location.