#Origami risk chicago full#

Suburban leaders fielding complaints about standing water and basement backups attempted to pin the blame on district officials for not opening the gate and locks earlier. First they opened a sluice gate separating the North Shore Channel from Lake Michigan in Wilmette, and then they opened locks near Navy Pier, relieving pressure on the system by allowing more than 1.1 billion gallons of murky, bacteria-laden waste to flow into the region's chief source of drinking water. Sewage overflows are an indicator that basements are flooding, effectively turning scores of homes into mini stormwater reservoirs.īy 2:27 p.m., local sewers and the Deep Tunnel were so saturated that district officials turned to their outlets of last resort.

'That's a lot of water to contend with in a very short period of time.' 'When you have a slow-moving storm that's dumping a large amount of rainfall, it doesn't take much to cause problems,' said Zachary Yack, a National Weather Service meteorologist who noted that up to 8 inches of rain fell in the western suburbs during the day. Waste and runoff would end up pouring out of 19 other overflow pipes across the county, from Evanston to Westchester, many for hours at a time.

Two hours later, the same thing happened at a pump station in north suburban Wilmette and another, much larger facility off Lawrence Avenue in Chicago, where fetid gunk flowed into the North Branch of the Chicago River for nearly a day.

#Origami risk chicago full#

The Deep Tunnel's massive sewers, capable of holding 2.3 billion gallons, were almost empty, according to Metropolitan Water Reclamation District records.Īt the end of tunnels hundreds of feet below the Chicago River, Des Plaines River and North Shore Channel, the McCook Reservoir-more than 20 times larger than Soldier Field-was just 17% full of raw sewage and runoff being stored until it could be safely treated.īut the first sign of trouble came before 8:30 a.m., when runoff mixed with human and industrial waste began pouring into the Des Plaines from an overflow pipe at 40th Street in southwest suburban Lyons, district records show.