The
Miami Conservancy District is a river management agency operating in Southwest
Ohio to control flooding of the
Great Miami River and its tributaries. It was organized in 1914 following the catastrophic
Great Dayton Flood of the Great Miami River in March 1913, which hit
Dayton, Ohio particularly hard. Designed by
Arthur Ernest Morgan, the Miami Conservancy District built
levees, straightened the river channel throughout the
Miami Valley, and built five
dry dams on various tributaries to control flooding. The district and its projects are unusual in that they were funded almost entirely by local tax initiatives, unlike similar projects elsewhere which were funded by the
federal government and coordinated by the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.