Page 5 - LDC FlipBook demo

operation, maintenance and improvement for water based purposes or other improvement(s) that could have been built for any other LCD authorized purposes.
The LCD did not adopt the final two possible missions: water supply for domestic, industrial and public use, and providing for collection, treatment and disposal
of sewage.
The location of Lawrenceburg on the banks of the Ohio River has allowed the city to grow and prosper, and at times has almost destroyed it.
The River brought a seemingly endless series of floods to the community’s earliest settlers.
Tradition says the Dearborn County Court House was reportedly surrounded by frozen water from the river when it burned to the ground in March of 1826, taking with it 23 years worth of records and history, although there is no official record of a flood that year.
Two years later, in 1828, a description of the town
was published, stressing the frequency of floods, and describing the inhabitants’ cheerful acceptance of the problem. According to the story, they simply moved to the second floor of their homes, planned a series
of parties, and visited back and forth by means of small boats.
In February of 1832 the Ohio rose to heights unseen in recorded history, when the unprotected town found itself under four to eight feet of water. Only Newtown remained above the flood.
David V. Culley reported in the Lawrenceburg Palladium that families had fled to multi-story buildings, and that some buildings had housed as many as five families at
a time.
Markland Locks and Dam, near Vevay, Indiana. The addition of locks and dams along the Ohio River raised the pool stage for Lawrenceburg from 18 to 32 feet.
He failed to mention damage until a few weeks later when he felt constrained to deny rumors in the Cincinnati press about the distress at Lawrenceburg.
Two small frames of log buildings had floated away,
he admitted, and some others had been removed from their foundations. But no one had been killed and what injuries there were, he insisted, were minor.
One account tells of a sow and her piglets who had taken shelter in the Methodist Church, then located on Walnut Street, and that remained there until the waters had totally receded.
Still there was no talk of a levee, but the town had begun its own innovative project to escape flood damage.
They began raising the level of many of the downtown streets, including the lower portion of High Street.
With street levels being raised as much as ten feet in some places, residents chose either to jack up their buildings and put new foundations under them, or simply to build another story on top of the existing home. In some areas of the old city, many back yards are still well below current street levels.
By 1847, the little town had become a real city, and was once again under water, this time in December, the only flood ever recorded here in that month. Few details are available except that the water reached a depth of 63 feet seven inches at Cincinnati on December 17. Upriver rains had caused the Ohio to begin to rise on December 10, and five days later there was a heavy fall of snow. That was all it took to inundate Lawrenceburg.