Reshaping Chicago’s Waterways
In the August 1975 edition of the Local 150 Engineer, President-Business Manager William F. Martin reported that the federal government recently had committed $56 million to a “deep tunnel project” that would run from “Chicago to Wilmette, Illinois.” This allocation, Martin believed, would bring jobs to Operating Engineers who had been struggling for years.
So began the 50-year run of one of the biggest and most important public works projects in American history—one that has provided thousands of Local 150 Operating Engineers with millions of manhours of work and still is going strong.
In 1972, officials from the State of Illinois, Cook County, and the City of Chicago, and the federal government came together to establish the Tunnell and Reservoir Plan (“TARP”). Its purpose was to prevent sewerage from contaminating Lake Michigan, the fresh water supply to the greater Chicago area. The problem stemmed from the hundred-year-old Chicago sewer system designed to prevent flooding which combined sewer water and rainwater—known as a “combined sewer overflow” (“CSO”) system). Modern suburban sewer systems separate sewer from rainwater, which helps prevent sewer backups in heavy rains. But it was determined to be impractical to rebuild a new, unconsolidated system for the greater Chicago area. Hence, the plan emerged to create a system that would store billions of gallons of untreated sewer and rainwater after heavy rains until it could be treated and cleaned and then returned to Lake Michigan.
The efforts to solve the problem of polluting Lake Michigan was not new. Ever since Chicago’s origins as a trading post on Lake Michigan’s shores, the Chicago River served as the principal vehicle for disposing of human and industrial waste. While this may not have been a big problem 200 years ago, by the mid- to late 1800s, it became a huge public health threat.
Between 1850 and 1900, the population of Chicago exploded from about 30,000 people to almost 1.7 million people. In 1889, the Illinois General Assembly established the Sanitary District of Chicago (now known as the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (“MWRD”)) to figure out how to address this emerging public health crisis. Its solution became known as one of the “Seven Wonders of American Engineering:” reverse the flow of the Chicago River. Instead of emptying industrial and human waste into Lake Michigan, the newly constructed Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal would divert the water southwest, into the Des Plaines River, then the Illinois River, and ultimately to the Mississippi River.
Construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal completed in 1900 is itself a fascinating story. Operating Engineers from Dredgemen’s Local 42 (which merged in 1929 with IUOE Locals 494 and 569 to become Local 150), did most of the work on that project. From there, most went on to dig the Panama Canal. The 125th anniversary of the Sanitary and Ship Canal’s reversal of the Chicago River is the subject of one of public television’s WTTW “Chicago Stories.” As that program reveals, the reversal of the river to send sewer water downstream was not popular with everyone. St. Louis, Missouri, sued Illinois to try to stop Chicago’s sewerage from polluting the Mississippi River, but that lawsuit failed.
Flash forward to the 1970s, and we see how a modern plan emerged. The idea behind the Deep Tunnel was to create a tunnel network that would capture storm water deep enough underground and store it until it could be treated and only then released back into Lake Michigan.
Phase One of the project was the construction of the tunnels. This started with the digging of vertical “Main Shafts” long enough to lower heavy equipment, personnel, and materials down to as deep as 300 feet. After excavating 90 feet of topsoil and clay, that meant drilling through the limestone that stretches across most of the Chicago area. At the 300-foot depth, tunnels could be dug horizontally, almost exclusively following the path of the Chicago River. Building the Deep Tunnel under the publicly owned river meant it would avoid private property and need not pay landowners or condemn their land.
President-Business Manager James M. Sweeney started his career as an Operating Engineer on the Deep Tunnel. While working on permit for Healy Ball Crow, Jim built haul roads out of shot rock on a CAT-955. Jim’s father, Local 150 member Martin Sweeney, ran one of the 3900 Manitowoc cranes that lowered equipment and materials down one of the several main shafts while working for the Shay-Kiewit Joint Venture. Retired Recording-Corresponding Secretary Steve Cisco also recalls working on the Deep Tunnel early in his career. For two straight years in the late 1970s, Steve says he oiled and operated a Hughes CSD drill rig for Kenny Construction.
At the 300-foot depth, Laborers would finish the shaft with dynamite to connect to the tunnels. Operating Engineers would resume work on the tunnels, which once drilled would be covered with a smooth concrete wall 30 feet in diameter. Rock from the tunnels would be moved to the main shaft with locomotives, where it would be crushed and conveyed to the surface, ultimately to be sold as aggregate.
In this fashion, the Deep Tunnel extended to 110 miles of tunnels, between 8 and 30 feet in diameter, 150 to 300 feet below the surface. The tunnels were completed and became operational in 2006.
Meanwhile, Phase Two of the project began with construction of three reservoirs. They were the Gloria Alitto Majewski reservoir in Elk Grove Village, the Thornton reservoir near South Holland, and the McCook reservoir in Bedford Park.
These reservoirs were actually converted quarries, sealed with grout. Billions of gallons of the Majewski and Thornton reservoirs are currently operational; and the McCook reservoir will be completed in 2029. Contaminated storm water is held in these reservoirs until it can be treated and released.
At the time it began, some Illinois politicians called the Deep Tunnel project a “boondoggle”—a waste of time and taxpayer money. Today, the Deep Tunnel has cut the number of “flood days” in Illinois by over 50 percent. Another Illinois politician, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley once stood alongside the Chicago River and declared that one day, we’d again be fishing in that river. He was right.