FINDLAY — Findlay is beginning what local leaders hope will be a new era of flood control, as work moves forward on the Eagle Creek Flood Basin, a 700-acre dry storage basin south of the city designed to hold back Blanchard River floodwater before it reaches homes and businesses. About 100 people gathered at the future basin site in rural Hancock County to mark the start of the project, the largest single piece of the region's long-running effort to tame the Blanchard.
Groundwork for the basin began in September, and the project is slated for completion in 18 to 24 months. The site sits in Eagle Township, about four miles south of Findlay, bounded by U.S. 68, County Road 45, Township Road 76 and Township Road 80. The need is written into the city's history: the August 2007 flood — the second-worst in Findlay's history, when the Blanchard crested at 18.46 feet — caused more than $100 million in damage, affected about 1,860 properties and forced more than 500 families to evacuate, and the river has crested above flood stage dozens of times over the past century.
Under normal conditions, Eagle Creek will flow as usual through the site. A control structure and spillway built across the creek will route water into the basin only when levels rise to a set point, while a normal flow continues downstream and keeps the creek within its banks. During a flood, the basin will be able to hold approximately 1.6 to 2.6 billion gallons of water — more than the city's Reservoir 1 — behind embankments ranging from about 12.5 feet to 30 feet high.
Most of the time, the basin will sit dry. Mayor Christina Muryn said the finished site will resemble a giant prairie, with a wetland area and walking paths planted with species chosen for ecological benefit. "I think it's going to be beautiful," Muryn said. "We will be looking to maximize the benefit for the least cost. Hancock County naturalists and the Boy Scout Camp will be able to use it. It will be an amenity that everyone can enjoy."
The basin is part of a broader Blanchard River mitigation program that local, county and conservancy officials have pursued since the 2007 disaster, funded in part by a Hancock County sales tax voters approved for flood work and by state support — Ohio provided $60 million in its 2022-23 operating budget for the Blanchard River flood-risk project, distributed through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to help cover the local cost share. Related work includes replacing the aging Norfolk Southern railroad bridge over the Blanchard in downtown Findlay with a wider, higher span that lets more water pass.
When construction is complete, the Maumee Watershed Conservancy District will hand ownership of the basin to the City of Findlay, and the city will maintain it the way it maintains its reservoirs. Together, the four parts of the plan are expected to cut Main Street flooding by about three feet in a 1-in-100-year storm and remove an estimated 1,830 parcels from the regulatory floodplain.
For residents who lived through 2007 — and the repeated high-water scares since — the timeline is the hard part: every delay leaves the city exposed to another flood without the protection in place. With crews now on the ground south of town, Findlay's flood fight has moved from plans to dirt, and the basin should be ready to hold its first flood within about two years.