GERMANTOWN, Ohio — If you live along the Miami or even Ohio River, chances are the Germantown Dam has saved you from severe flooding. Now, crews are making what officials are calling "necessary" repairs to the original dam to continue protecting Southwest Ohio residents.
In 1913, heavy rains hit Ohio and much of the Midwest, causing what’s now remembered as the Great Flood of 1913.
"Specifically, Southwest Ohio got the worst of the 1913 flood," said Don O’Connor, the chief engineer for the Miami Conservancy District. "Lead to over 300 lives lost, and millions of dollars worth of flood damage to property."
That flood led to the construction of several dams and levees, including the Germantown Dam. This protects a number of towns down the Miami River, including Middletown and Hamilton.
Hear why the Germantown Dam is important to river communities, and its need for repairs:
So far, it’s been doing its job with some repairs over the years.
"We haven’t experienced any during the rainy season. The level will get up, but it never floods anything around here," said Tim Griffith, a Middletown resident who lives near the Miami River.
But now, original parts of the dam are in desperate need of repair.
The dam repair project will cost $1.5 million and is focused on the right conduit of the dam, which is like a tunnel where the water flows through from one side of the dam to the other. Workers will specifically be repairing the 100+ year-old concrete on the floor of the conduit.
The Miami Conservatory District says this repair is "essential to protecting thousands of lives and billions in property value."
"If we did not make these rehabilitation repairs, and they got worse and worse, there’s a chance those conduits would fail, which would lead to catastrophic flooding," said O’Connor.
O’Connor added that even Cincinnati Metro could be impacted if the dam were to fail.
While the deterioration of concrete is the main reason for the needed repairs, O’Connor told me that climate change also plays a role.
"The precipitation trends and the flooding trends, meaning the amount of storage we are storing behind these dams, has increased in the last 30 years,” said O’Connor. "It has gone consistently up, and that trend is continuing to go up."
The dam repairs are scheduled to be completed in October, weather permitting.
