In the meantime, I'll let MWRD do the talking.
A short article with a couple of videos
A longer article with several photos
A history starting with 1834 (source)
I have written some things about the reservoirs and pumping stations. And my tour of the Stickney Water Treatment Plant. What I haven't tackled yet is the tunnels. They used boring machines for some of it. They used explosives for other parts because you would read in the paper about dishes rattling in people's houses when an explosion was detonated. And some houses even developed cracks in the walls.
A tour of the Calumet facilities and the Thorton Reservoir
A list of my reservoir posts:
- The tunnel valve for McCook
- Blowing up 27,000 tons of rock for McCook
- Thornton and McCook Reservoirs
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| MWRD |
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| MWRD from UofI |
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| MWRD posted Debra Shore, June 12, 2019
By now many of you may have heard that the month of May was the wettest on record for northern Illinois since we started measuring rainfall in 1871, outstripping the prior record May for rainfall, which occurred just last year. Cook County recorded 8.25” of rain in May, roughly 20 percent of the total annual rainfall in one month!
During the month of May, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s Tunnel and Reservoir system intercepted nearly 13.6 billion gallons of combined sewer overflows (CSOs). That’s sewage and waste water from our homes, businesses, and industries combined with rain washing over city streets collecting salt, oil, pet poop, brake dust, and fertilizer from lawns and gardens that otherwise would have flowed directly into nearby rivers and streams, polluting them significantly.
From January through May 31, the Tunnel and Reservoir system captured 42.56 billion gallons of combined sewer overflows. Think about that: if that amount of water covered the surface area of Chicago, we’d be wading in 10.5” of stormwater mixed with sewage. Remarkably, given the record rains, there have been NO REVERSALS of CSOs to Lake Michigan since October 2017.
Consider this: even though our region has been breaking rainfall records, we’ve avoided reversals to the lake, the Albany Park diversion tunnel has saved that area from flooding, and CSOs are down in number. The reason? The first phase of the McCook Reservoir, which can capture and hold 3.5 billion gallons of CSOs, went online in December 2017.
Thanks are due not only to huge pipes and tunnels, but also to the heroic efforts by MWRD staff to lower water levels in the Chicago Area Waterways system in advance of storms to give the system as much capacity as possible to capture stormwater. During the late May storms, the gates releasing water at MWRD’s Lockport Powerhouse were open as wide as possible and the flow recorded there was 20,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). By comparison, Chicago can legally withdraw only 3,200 cfs/day of freshwater from Lake Michigan.
Here's a fascinating fact: one cubic foot of water weighs 62.5 lbs. Thus, the flow of 20,000 cfs at Lockport equaled 625 tons of water per second flowing through the Powerhouse gates. The high flows on the Chicago Waterways also brought commercial barge traffic to a standstill in recent months. Beginning on May 7th, the US Coast Guard halted barge traffic on the Illinois River (which receives flows from the Chicago Waterways).
And our soils are soaked! The soil moisture in Cook County is now higher than 99 percent of the historical record, according to NOAA and the National Weather Service. Saturated soils mean much less capacity to absorb rain when it comes.
The Great Lakes have responded to this record-setting weather as well. According the Army Corps of Engineers, which tracks Great Lakes water levels, Lake Erie and Lake Superior reached new monthly mean high water levels in May, and Lake Ontario surpassed its all-time record high level this week. As of the first week of June, Lake Michigan is 13” above its average level and is expected to continue rising through this summer. Lake Michigan is currently just 2” below its all-time record height for June, set in 1986.
What’s to be done with all this water? First, expect the unprecedented. Predictions for the climate crisis in northeastern Illinois include more intense, less predictable rain and snowstorms. These are likely to be our new normal. Consider this conundrum: warmer air here in Illinois means more water evaporates and coalesces into violent storms, while warmer air in the Arctic destabilizes the jet stream, leading the Great Lakes to freeze over and lake levels to rise when the ice melts. Cook County sits at the crux of these forces, with all the variability that entails.
Second, let’s do everything we can to give the land more absorptive capacity. We should install rain gardens, bioswales, permeable pavement, and green roofs everywhere we can to capture rain and keep it out of the sewers. But we may also need to un-finish our basements and expect them to take on water now and then -- the way things used to be. (A harsh reality, I know, but we live in a flat, wet world. There’s no downhill to move water away from us.) Finally, let’s get creative about ways to capture (and reuse) rain. Let's think about repurposing rail tank cars for stormwater capture next to big box stores and warehouses. Let's install community cisterns block by block and re-green vacant lots as wetlands. Let's convert parkway patches into prairie grass stands. Bring your ideas to your local representatives and push for action. Folks, we need all hands on deck because we’re taking on water!
Debra
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| safe_image for Tunnel Vision Construction workers lean in to discuss the project over the noises echoing throughout the Deep Tunnel. Photos by David Schalliol. [The name has been changed from TARP to Deep Tunnel.] [It appears somebody cut&pasted from someone. Patrick McBriarty shared a link.] |
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| safe_image for a broken link Learn about our Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, one of the world's largest infrastructure projects U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Chicago District Senator Dick Durbin When I tried accessing the link, I got a 404 response. Even the "case studies" link on their own site is broken. |
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| safe_image for Why the World Is Closely Eyeing Chicago’s Decades-Long Mega Aquatic Infrastructure Project |
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| safe_image for One of the World's Largest Infrastructure Projects Saves One of the Nation's Largest Cities |
Oct 31, 2022: MWRD posted 10 photos (that I have not copied) with the comment:
For immediate releaseOctober 31, 2022TARP at 50: How one of the world’s largest public works projects for water has protected the Chicago regionFifty years ago this October, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) formally adopted the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP) to reduce the worsening flooding and pollution problem caused by combined sewer overflows, and in the process protected regional waterways and Lake Michigan for generations to come.As development spread rapidly through Chicago and suburbs in the 20th century, paved surfaces directed increasing amounts of stormwater runoff into the combined sewer systems. By the 1960s, Chicago area sewers were overflowing to the river more than 100 days a year and flooding had become a persistent issue. But Chicago leaders knew they could not rebuild the city to save it. They needed a plan, and it was on Oct. 20, 1972, that TARP formally came into the picture.It was initially dubbed as the Chicago Underflow Plan, a solution chosen out of 23 alternatives to address flood and pollution control, coming in at a price tag of $1.223 billion. Known famously today as “Deep Tunnel,” the MWRD’s system is unmatched in size throughout the world but emulated just the same.The TARP system is comprised of four large tunnels constructed 150 to 300 feet below ground to convey water by gravity into three mega reservoirs. The system is designed to reduce the amount of water pollution overflowing into waterways by holding the water until it can be pumped to and cleaned at MWRD water reclamation plants. As the project expanded, so too did its impact, and after 50 years of service and protection, the MWRD estimates that tunnels and reservoirs have captured more than 1 trillion gallons of combined sewage to protect and improve area waterways and reduce flooding.To commemorate 50 years, the MWRD Board of Commissioners on Oct. 20 passed a resolution to celebrate this milestone, and the MWRD hosted a virtual tour and TARP birthday party on Oct. 26.
The tunnel is not a secret, and I shoved the cursor over the climate change stuff. And, as with most reports about the Deep Tunnel, it claims that when the reservoirs are full and water overflows into the river, it will be polluted. In practice, the first flush of the sewers is captured in the reservoirs and by the time the sewers overflow into the river the water is mostly rainwater.
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| 10:30 video @ 0:45 |
Once again, this report omits explaining that the reservoirs capture the initial flush of the system. At 3:20, they claim that it "dumped millions of gallons of untreated water and sewage into Lake Michigan." That is not true, by then they are dumping mostly storm water. The first few billion gallons of the storm should have flushed the system's sewage into the reservoirs. When the reservoirs are full, the only poop being released should be what was produced during the storm. And that sewage would be highly diluted by the storm water that is causing the flooding. I blame the MWRD for not explaining the significance of capturing the initial flush of a storm event.
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| safe_image for Deep Tunnel under pressure: Cook County's flood control system faces climate change challenges Dennis DeBruler: Don't the reservoirs capture the initial flush? And instead of dumping "millions of gallons of untreated water and sewage into Lake Michigan," the system is dumping primarly storm water into the lake? |
MWRD posted five photos with the comment:
Check out the feature in the Wall Street Journal about the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan/Deep Tunnel: “Chicago Is Spending $3.8 Billion to Fight Flooding. It Might Not Be Enough.”| Photographs by Mustafa Hussain for The Wall Street JournalCHICAGO—Engineers have spent nearly 50 years and billions of dollars building huge tunnels and reservoirs to protect this city from flooding. In a changing climate, it may no longer be enough.A July 2 storm dropped more than 8 inches of rain on some parts of the nation’s third-largest city and its suburbs, flooding tens of thousands of basements and prompting a federal disaster declaration. Once the tunnels and main reservoir were full, sewage and storm water poured into the Chicago River, forcing officials to reverse its flow and send the tainted mix into Lake Michigan, the region’s main source of drinking water.The $3.8 billion Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, also known as the Deep Tunnel—comprising over 100 miles of tunnels and three reservoirs covering different parts of the region—has kept a trillion gallons of sewage-tainted water out of local waterways since 1981, according to officials at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.A huge addition to the McCook Reservoir serving Chicago and certain suburbs is expected to open in 2029, adding 6.5 billion gallons of capacity to the current reservoir’s 3.5 billion gallons. That will further reduce the frequency of spills into the Chicago River, but officials aren’t certain even that will be enough to bottle up the biggest storms.“It’s sort of a Catch-22,” said Kevin Fitzpatrick, assistant director of engineering for the reclamation district, just before heading 300 feet below ground to show a visitor the giant pumps that send the water after storms to a huge sewage treatment plant. “We’re in a lot better spot because we have the reservoirs, but the storms that we’re getting now are a little bit more than maybe they designed this thing for in the 1970s. It’s so unpredictable with these weather patterns.”Adding the second phase of the McCook Reservoir, currently being mined for limestone, will provide more space for excess storm water.Chicago isn’t alone in wrestling with storm runoff and sewage spills amid more intense storms kicked up by the warming climate. Infrastructure built for the storms of the past might not be enough to withstand the events of the future as climate change alters rainfall patterns, raising difficult questions about how cities will be able to adjust massive projects to handle more water without incurring prohibitive costs.“Almost everything that’s been built in the past couple of decades is just undersized for the type of rain events that we get today because of climate change,” said Bob Dean, chief strategy and program officer at the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-based nonprofit that recently published a study showing that storm and wastewater systems in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, South Bend, Ind., and Buffalo, N.Y., were built to address now-outdated storm data.Even projects still on the drawing board, such as the so-called Ike Dike in Galveston Bay, a $31 billion coastal barrier to protect the Texas Gulf Coast from hurricanes, might not be up to the task of countering the biggest storms.“A lot of times we’re designing these things for yesterday’s storms, not tomorrow’s storms,” said Rob Moore, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group. “Beyond that, it’s the fallacy that the single engineered solution is going to protect us. Whether it’s a deep tunnel project or a storm surge barrier or levee, the single mode of protection is also a single mode of failure.”Philadelphia and other cities are leading the way in using what is known as green infrastructure to divert water from the storm-drainage system through things such as rain gardens, permeable alleys and other projects, he said. Reclamation district officials for the Chicago area are also pouring money into projects such as converting hard-surface school playgrounds into artificial-turf soccer fields that can store rainwater and release it slowly into the storm-water system, officials said.In Chicago, the deep tunnel project does little to alleviate one major source of flooding: areas where older local pipes aren’t big enough to send water out of the neighborhoods during big rains.That is one reason why there were so many flooded basements with the July 2 storm, officials said. “We were getting flooding complaints before the reservoir was full,” said Ed Staudacher, assistant director of maintenance and operations with the reclamation district. “It’s not even getting to us quick enough before they’re flooding.”Lavelle Parker, 44, who drives a street sweeper for the city’s streets and sanitation department, said the 2½ feet of tainted water that flooded his basement apartment in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side sent a couch across the living room and ruined most of his possessions.“I’ve been living in Chicago all my life and I’ve never seen a flood like that,” said Parker, who has been staying with his girlfriend since the flood.Austin and the suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn had rainfall that would be expected to happen only once every 500 years, while other areas received the equivalent of 50- to 100-year rainfalls, all within about six hours, said Kevin Doom, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “The system as a whole was absolutely crawling across the area. There was just copious amounts of water vapor to work with,” he said.To get ready for the coming rains, workers in the glassed-in control room off the lobby of the reclamation district’s Chicago headquarters opened gates southwest of the city to lower river levels and make room for storm water, Staudacher said.As the deluge gained steam, runoff and sewage began flowing through the massive deep tunnel—most of it 33 feet in diameter and hundreds of feet below city streets—toward the McCook Reservoir southwest of the city. Soon workers called in reinforcements, including Staudacher, as the reservoir filled at the fastest pace he says he can remember.When the reservoir finally topped off, the dirty water started flowing straight into the river, which rose 6 feet, threatening to spill its banks. That is when reclamation district officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened locks and gates, allowing water to flow into Lake Michigan from the Chicago River. It was just the second time Chicago River water had been released into the lake since the first phase of the McCook Reservoir opened in late 2017, compared with four times in the previous six years.“It’s stressful in this room during these storms,” he said. “There’s always curveballs thrown at you.”Researchers say greater use of green infrastructure and analysis of massive data sets through tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning could help the district cope with bigger storms ahead. “You have to adapt to what Mother Nature throws at you, and right now Mother Nature is as upset as it can possibly be,” said Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
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