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A Sentinel for the Future
Almost symbolically, the Conservancy District Headquarters stands less than a block from the site of the initial break in the levee in the Dayton central business district.
It was fitting that Edward A. Deeds then a vice‑president of N‑C‑R should be named to the board of the Miami Conservancy District. Obviously speaking for John Patterson, in support of adoption of the flood prevention plan Deeds gave speeches and slide shows at schools, churches and town halls. He often talked about a future safe from the fear of floods.
Deeds’ commitment to the conservancy plan is best expressed in his own words: “Out of the many experiences connected with Conservancy which I shall never forget, I should like to mention … a question directed to me by one of the Common Pleas Court judges charged with supervision of the Conservancy District under the law.
“This judge, sincerely concerned about the adequacy of the system, asked the question: ‘Colonel Deeds, do you have full confidence in the efficiency of the Conservancy works?’ I did not answer immediately, but – when I did – I said this: “Your honor, my family means more to me than anything else in the world. I should not hesitate one minute to build my home immediately below any of the five dams in this valley and live there the rest of my life. I know my home would be safe and my family would be safe.
“Being able to make that statement epitomized for me all that we had been working for from the first day that the first step was taken toward flood control.”
In 1914, the Ohio General Assembly passed the Vonderheide Act stipulating among other things that, upon petition for creation of a conservancy district, the Common Pleas judges of the counties to be included in the conservancy district would constitute a Conservancy Court. That Court would determine whether a conservancy district should be organized. Another stipulation was an unusual method by which assessments for construction of conservancy dams would derive from benefits realized by residents of the valley.
The Miami Valley Conservancy Plan called for improvement of river channels in Dayton and attendant changes in bridges spanning them, straightening of the Great Miami channel as well as raising levees and construction of five storage reservoirs, or dry dams, to contain flood waters. The cost of the project was estimated to be $12 million.
The most important aspect of the unique conservancy plan was Morgan’s idea for “dry dams” that don’t contain water behind them in lakes or pools; using channels, levees and conduits, they keep flood waters temporarily in a basin and release them downstream at a controlled rate.
Pools that form behind the dams Morgan proposed would dissipate in a few days and – during most of the year – the land there would be usable for farming or recreation, but not for permanent habitation. Morgan himself had built dry dams in Missouri, but not on the scale of the Miami Conservancy dams, which would be capable of holding a volume of water 40 percent greater than that of the 1913 flood!
A Monumental Effort
Work on the flood control began in January, 1918. Morgan and his engineers had acquired nearly all of the construction equipment for the project by February: 18 drag lines, 200 dump cars, 73 miles of high-voltage electric transmission lines, 29 locomotives, 15 miles of railroad track and 80 trucks and automobiles.
Of course, there were problems, especially with acquiring drag lines. One had to be shoveled out of six‑foot‑deep snow in sub‑zero weather, to remove it from an open mine in northern Michigan. They dug three out of the snow in a drainage canal near Chicago and dragged two more from a swamp in Mississippi and transported them to Dayton for overhaul and reassembling.
In addition to operating a railroad, to support its work of enlarging river channels, building levees and removing sand bars the Miami Conservancy District also had a miniature navy, its flagship a stern-wheel steamboat named the Dorothy Jean in honor of John Patterson’s daughter.
Rather than hire private construction contractors, the Miami Conservancy District took on all the construction and necessary support activities by itself. It bought building equipment, erected shops and warehouses, recruited the work force and built houses for them at the dam sites, laid railroad track, built barges and assembled a fleet of vehicles. Morgan believed that to be the most practical and efficient way to undertake the largest construction project in the nation up to that time.
Arthur Morgan had raised self-sufficiency to a science. Competing with patriotic war bond campaigns, the Conservancy District nonetheless was able to sell two 30-year bond issues totaling more than $33 million dollars.
Conservancy engineers faced the problem of designing into the dry dams a means of harmlessly releasing the tremendous kinetic energy created by water during a flood being forced out of the conduits at high pressure and great velocity. Morgan’s engineers developed the solution, a new engineering concept, at – of all places – the swimming pool at the Deeds estate. They designed the conduits of the dam to feed water down an inclined plane, over a weir – or low dam – into a stilling pool. Backwater from below tended to pile on top of the pool and create a standing wave, destroying the kinetic energy by internal friction.
The Miami Conservancy District employed a novel building technique, the use of hydraulic fill – a slurry of sand, gravel and clay – pumped through dredge pipes to fill the dams. Hydraulic monitors – powerful jets of water shot through nozzles – washed the earth into sluices and onto some of the dam sites. As the water gradually drained away, the dams rose in lavers of impervious clay in the center, forming a waterproof core. The sand and gravel then formed the faces of the dams.
Concerned about the improvement of people and the community, Morgan was a social visionary. At each of the five dams, he built a camp for the construction workers. And he authored a Labor Code for the District. Supported by local union officials, it gave workers the right to organize into unions and bargain collectively, and it recognized the eight‑hour workday, time‑and‑one‑half pay for overtime work and the determination of wages solely by level of skills.
Morgan completed the Miami Conservancy District construction project on April 17, 1923. While each provides excellent flood protection for each town in its area, the retarding basins on the Miami, Stillwater and Mad Rivers all within a few miles of Dayton control about 2,400 of the 2,500 square miles of the rivers’ drainage area above the city.
Morgan described the engineering and construction of the five dams as the best project he had ever been involved with. He considered the Miami Conservancy District as a sort of training school for the Tennessee Valley Authority, of which would become the first chairman after serving as president of Antioch College in Yellow Springs.
An Ongoing Commitment
Today, the Miami Conservancy District’s (MCD) five dams – Germantown, Englewood, Lockington, Taylorsville, and Huffman – stand as monuments to the determination of the people of the Miami Valley, who survived the Great Flood of 1913.
Together with thousands of acres of preserved floodplain, 55 miles of levee, and improvements to the river channel, these five dams keep the Great Miami River within its banks as it flows through the region’s population centers. Arthur Morgan designed this integrated system to provide robust flood protection to cities that experienced Great Miami River flooding in 1913, including Piqua, Troy, Dayton, West Carrollton, Miamisburg, Franklin, Middletown and Hamilton.
These cities that had experienced flooding on a regular basis prior to the flood protection system’s construction can now prosper, knowing that flood risk has been significantly diminished. The MCD system continues to withstand extreme weather events and is designed to handle floods up to 40 percent greater than 1913.
Cities and counties, along with individuals and businesses, which are protected by the system, share the cost to maintain it. Their return on investment is excellent. Protected cities and counties along the Great Miami River no longer worry about a myriad of potential flood issues, from roads and bridges being destroyed to emergency services being interrupted. Businesses and residents in protected Great Miami River cities are no longer anxious about their facilities and homes flooding when a major storm comes to the Miami Valley.
From the beginning, MCD’s core mission has been flood protection, but the organization strives to meet other regional needs. Thousands of acres of productive farmland were preserved and park lands and forests were created when the dams were constructed.
MCD also works to protect and preserve the quality and quantity of the aquifer which provides drinking water to about 1.6 million people in the region, and to improve the health of our rivers and streams.
Always a proponent of public recreation, the MCD maintains nearly 35 miles of bikeway along the rivers in Montgomery and Warren counties and promotes the use of our natural lands and waterways for kayaking, canoeing, fishing and more.
What does the Miami Conservancy District represent to the world? Well, that’s open to interpretation. But, I can’t help but feel that, embodied in the earth and concrete of those five dams, is the spirit of the people of the Miami Valley, the spirit that – in 1913 – Miss Marot of the Marot School, in writing of her experiences during the flood, described most eloquently:
“Late Thursday afternoon, (March 27), we were taken from our house by the militia … our suffering did not compare with that of most of those who were rescued. Many lived in trees, in the gables of houses, on roofs, for three days and nights, with children, without food and water, with a cold, bleak wind blowing and in imminent danger. Many who have spent their lives accumulating a little property are without home or business. On Friday, I gave out food from the improvised commissary. Men with sunken eyes and haggard faces came for a loaf of bread … everywhere we see patient acceptance of this disaster. The people on the hills have proved themselves great in courage, in wisdom and generosity. This experience has leveled the rich and poor and made friends of all of us. Everyone looks up cheerfully … we are greater in mind and soul and poorer in material things than we have ever been before.
“We hear no complaints, no lamenting. Businessmen are hurrying to take over their ruined affairs … we are muddy and poor and desperately cheerful, and in spite of deprivation and hardship, well and courageous … this is true of everyone. There is surprisingly little illness in the city.
“We shall doubtless descend to the original night and fight each other in the dark, but we shall not forget our arch‑angelical state, when the flood washed each of us to the level of his own soul, and we lived in the light of a hitherto unseen glory.”
Amen.
# # #
The author acknowledges with sincere gratitude the assistance provided his research efforts by Nancy Horlacher, Local History Specialist, Dayton Metro Library; Brenda Gibson, Public Relations Manager and Angela Manuszak, Miami Conservancy District; and Jason Antonick, Manager, Business & Economic Development, Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.
Photos and Captions courtesy of the Miami Conservancy District unless otherwise noted in the caption.
All of the research I performed that bore positive results came from the following two books, which were the property of the Miami Conservancy District and in its basement library when I reviewed/researched them:
“Keeping the Promise, A Pictorial History of the Miami Conservancy District” by Carl M. Becker and Patrick Nolan. Copyright 1988.
“The Miami Conservancy District” by A.E. Morgan. Copyright 1951 McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
Elaine Pierce Nishwitz says
I was so surprised to see that Joe Aiello authored this history piece. My husband and I were classmates with him in early 60s at Sinclair College. I grew up in Dayton but my father was from Piqua and had help pull people off of the river at the Shawnee bridge. My husband was from a farm not far from Lockington Dam and we live a mile west of Lockington Dam. Last week we had minor flooding as we often do in spring. I remember to thank those people who raised the money to build these dams and to the Miami Conservancy for working to keep them in good shape.