U.S. Rep. Mike Turner announced Tuesday, Oct. 20, that he secured $8.685 million in federal funding for repairs to three Miami Conservancy District dams in the Dayton and Miami Valley area. The funding is for the Germantown Dam, the Englewood Dam and the Taylorsville Dam, three of the five dams operated by the district as part of its flood protection system for southwest Ohio.
The federal money will cover a significant portion of a rehabilitation project totaling roughly $15 million across the three dams. The work is part of the district’s effort to repair aging structures that have protected communities along the Great Miami River and its tributaries for more than a century.
Turner said the funding reflects the region’s case for receiving federal support for a system that local residents originally paid to build. “It’s very, very important for us to get our fair share of federal monies to build this and to maintain this system that we built ourselves,” Turner said. He also called it his honor to work with the district on the effort.
The Miami Conservancy District was organized in 1914 after the catastrophic Great Flood of 1913 in Dayton. That flood prompted local leaders and residents to create a regional system designed to prevent a similar disaster. The district was built with support raised almost entirely through local taxes, rather than through federal funding, at the time of its construction.
The district operates five “dry” dams — Englewood, Germantown, Huffman, Lockington and Taylorsville — along with about 55 miles of levees. The dams were built from 1919 to 1922 and are designed to temporarily store floodwater during heavy rain and then release it gradually downstream. Unlike reservoirs that hold water permanently, the dry dams are intended to remain empty except during flood events.
Englewood is the largest of the five dams. Germantown Dam regulates Twin Creek near Germantown, while Taylorsville Dam regulates the Great Miami River near Vandalia. Together with the rest of the system, the three dams covered by the new funding help protect more than a million residents and billions of dollars in homes, businesses and infrastructure across southwest Ohio, according to the district.
The repairs come as the district carries out a phased capital improvement program to rehabilitate aging concrete and levees across its system. Phase 1 of that program totals about $34.5 million and runs through 2032. The federal funding for Germantown, Englewood and Taylorsville addresses a portion of that larger need, with the remaining cost of the roughly $15 million project to be covered from other sources.
With the federal funding now secured, the district can move forward with rehabilitation work on the three dams under its capital program. No start date for construction on the individual dams was included in Tuesday’s announcement.
Photo: HistoricBuildingFan, CC BY-SA 4.0