DAYTON — The Miami Valley Conservancy is an engineering marvel that is in our backyard.
It’s been protecting our region from flooding for more than 100 years.
The Great Flood of 1913 caused floodwaters to reach 20 feet high in Dayton, devastating the city and many other communities. More than 300 people died as a result.
Sarah Hippensteel Hall, Manager Communications, Outreach and Stewardship for the conservancy district, said, “Three large storms converged over the Midwest. Enough rain came through the region to inundate the riverfront cities with high water.”
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Hippensteel Hall continued by saying, “People who were waiting to be rescued, they had to go to their attic, and the slogan became, ‘remember those promises you made in the attic.’”
That promise led to the establishment of the Miami Valley Conservancy District in 1915. By 1922, a complete flood control and prevention system consisting of five dams and 43 initial miles of levees had been established. Since construction of the five dams, they have been put to the test.
“It has actually stored flood waters more than 2,100 times,” Hippensteel said. That’s a lot of flood prevention, and even with changing precipitation patterns, the systems can hold back more flood water than our region has ever documented.
Don O’Connor, Chief Engineer Miami Conversancy District, said, “It’s a very innovative system from when it was built and even now.”
Their design is simple but effective.
“I like to compare them to bathtubs. Once these dams are built, they turn the storage basins into bathtubs, so there are no plugs,” O’Connor said.
The unplugged conduits release the held water at a rate that the waterway downstream can handle. Engineers designed the dams to hold back a flood even much larger than the Great Flood of 1913.
“They took all of this data and attempted with the science to protect against the 1913 flood plus 40 percent more,” O’Connor said.
And, since its construction, the system has never come close to being topped.
“They literally said we can never have this happen again,” O’Connor said.
They built the system so big that the spillways have never been topped, and the system has only reached 40% capacity once in 1959. A flood control system of this magnitude takes a lot of maintenance.
“Anything human-built like this will need maintenance, especially concrete and steel. We have been working, collecting data over the last 100 years, and we always look at new technology for the dam to make sure it will hold up against anything we have learned about over the past 100 years,” O’Connor said.
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