User:EmeraldJ/Chicago River

History and Issue of Water Quality
Over the course and history of Chicago’s creation water quality has always been an important concern. Ever since the village of Chicago, later changed to City of Chicago in 1857, was formed in 1834 for its unique geography and accessibility to one of the largest bodies of fresh water, the Great Lakes, it has had to deal with a number of issues concerning water quality to deal with the changes in its ever growing magnitude (Macaitis). Initially the main concern around water quality stemmed from the constant drainage of sewage into the Chicago River and then ultimately into Lake Michigan due to the village lacking a sophisticated form of drainage, instead relying almost solely on roadside ditches (Macaitis). The Chicago inhabitants eventually took precautions to gather and utilize water from Lake Michigan by means of water intake valves that open up and ingest water from 4 miles way around 1840, however the contaminants were still able to reach the water supply (Burrill). To deal with the issue of a potentially contaminated city water supply, the State of Illinois created a drainage commission for the Chicago area in 1852 (Macaitis). In 1856 the master drainage plan was adopted by the commission after considering about 50 plus alternative ideas (Macaitis). The master drainage plan was centered around the fundamental aspect of raising the city by 3m and constructing new sewers that drained into the river and not the lake (Macaitis). However once indoor plumbing was introduced to the world the original sewer design, which was only designed to drain storm water runoff,  took on the dual responsibility to not only handle storm water, but also the sewage created from indoor plumbing (Macaitis). A combined sewage system can cause serious water pollution due to the fact that when wet weather occurs and runoff exceeds the maximum flow rate of the system, the excess runoff that the system can’t handle is discharged directly into a nearby body of water, whether it be a lake or a river. (see figure 1)

In early as four years after the implementation of the master drainage plan, the sewage commissioners called for the deepening and overall enlargement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, going as far as to declare it as a, “measure indispensable to the protection and health of the city” (Rauch). The Canal had originally been created in 1848 with the purely commercial reasoning to function as a lock and pumping works for boats when the water was too low (Burrill). Due to the ever expanding population and industrialization of Chicago, sewage and waste from domestic residents, slaughter-houses, and other sources continued to increase in volume and pour into the river (Rauch). In 1863 an epidemic of Erysipelas broke out among the river, a direct consequence of the filth and pollution of the water. The epidemic of Erysipelas coupled with the outcry and call for a better canal by the sewage commissioners resulted in the modification of the the Illinois and Michigan canal in 1865 (Rauch). The modification of the system changed the function of the canal so as to be able to utilize the pumps in an effort to cleanse the river (Burrill). Specifically, it took water pumped in from the Chicago River and discharged it back onto a high point in the canal to ease and reduce the water pollution of Lake Michigan, our main supply of water (Macaitis). However, the canal was an inadequate solution to combat the growing problems to come (Macaitis). In 1885 an epidemic of waterborne disease arose and flourished due to the coupling of the ever increasing volume of waste as well as the sedimentation that occurred in the Illinois and Michigan canal in 1879, which reduced the original slow current to an even more reduced flow capacity (Macaitis). To directly combat the continuously increased volumes of polluted and contaminated water the city of Chicago created the Chicago Sanitary District, which was constructed with the purpose of creating and maintaining a canal system that reverses the flow of the Chicago River and the Calumet River systems (Macaitis).