The Stevenson Corridor

Of the tens of thousands of motorists who every day drive along the section of Interstate 55 that bisects the Chicago metropolitan area, (known to locals as the Stevenson Expressway), my guess is few of them consider that particular patch of concrete and its surrounding area as anything special, if they consider them at all. While it does provide a spectacular view of the city as you approach it from the southwest, to the uninitiated, the Stevenson, like most highways of its type, is nothing less than a brutal assault on the senses: a tedious landscape, flanked by uninspired shrubbery and architecture, littered with endless billboards, the typical detritus of our automobile/consumer culture. Some of the notable institutions the expressway passes are the largest single site jail in the Unites States, Cook County Jail, and the world's largest sewage treatment facility, the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant. That plant as well as the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal and the numerous industries served by it, produce the foul smell to which travelers on the highway have become accustomed. The rumble of freight trains, the blasts of their locomotives' horns, and the endless drone of rubber on the concrete pavement make for a sound landscape every bit as unwelcoming as the visual one. If that weren't enough, adding to the anxiety is the recent phenomenon of random shootings and other crimes taking place on the highway, not to mention the inherent danger of high speed motor travel, that contribute not a small about to the overall grimness of the place.

Heading eastbound on the Adlai E. Stevenson Expressway

No, you will not find the Stevenson, (named after former Illinois governor and UN ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson), and its environs in the guidebooks, or on very many bucket lists of things to do in Chicago. As it has for centuries, the corridor exists as a place you pass through to get someplace else. 

In spite of, or perhaps because of that, the Stevenson Corridor occupies the most historically significant geography in the entire Chicago metropolitan area. In fact, the very reason Chicago exists as all is because of the transportation corridor occupied now by the highway, that existed long before settlers of European descent set foot in the region.

If you're up on your Chicago history, or read my post on the Erie Canal, you understand why. In short, the land underneath the current superhighway, roughly between Ashland and Harlem Avenues, once served as the portage trail between the South Branch of the Chicago River, which flowed into Lake Michigan, and the Des Plaines River, whose waters eventually make their way into the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. That seven mile Chicago Portage was for Native Americans and the Europeans who followed them, the shortest, most accommodating barrier between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River systems. Interest in the future development of Chicago goes all the way back 1673 when the explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, the first Europeans to set foot in the area, came up with the idea of building a canal that would connect the two waterways.

That canal eventually was built. Completed in 1848, the Illinois & Michigan Canal was much longer than Jolliet's conception, bypassing the Des Plaines, because that river was un-navigable for anything larger than a canoe for much of the year. Instead the I&M Canal made a 96 mile beeline straight to the Illinois River. Only traces of the I&M Canal exist today, it was made obsolescent not long after its completion by the advent of the railroad, and completely supplanted by the much larger Ship and Sanitary Canal. That notwithstanding. the I&M Canal was vital to the development of Chicago, as speculative investment capital in anticipation of its construction is directly responsible for turning a river trading post into a major city. Many of the same investors who built the canal turned their attention to the railroads and it followed quite naturally that Chicago would become the transportation hub of the Midwest. 

As it has for centuries, the Stevenson Corridor continues to be a major transportation conduit for Chicago, the Midwest, and the entire nation. The expressway is the final leg of I-55 which begins in East St. Louis, Illinois. It supplanted the first leg of legendary of Route 66 which as the song reminds us, wound

...from Chicago to LA, more than two thousand miles along the way.

In turn, Route 66 took much of the traffic off one of Chicago's most storied thoroughfares, Archer Avenue, originally an Indian trail, which followed the Chicago Portage and later the canal, all the way to Lockport, Illinois. 

As storied as Route 66, is the railroad line that follows the route of the canals and the Stevenson Expressway into Chicago. The tracks, now the property of the mega-corporation known as BNSF, were once the domain of the Santa Fe Railroad, upon which their legendary passenger train the Super Chief entered the city after its 36 hour 49 minute run from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. The Super Chief is gone but its tracks are still heavily used to carry freight trains into, out of, and through the city as well as Amtrak passenger trains headed to points west. Chicago's elevated rapid transit also makes a brief appearance alongside the Stevenson on old railroad right of way, in the form of the system's "Orange Line" connecting Midway Airport a mile south of the expressway, to Chicago's Loop.  

Finally, the Ship and Sanitary Canal which opened in 1900, continues, as its name implies, to be a navigation canal as well as a transportation system for a much less pleasant substance, Chicago's sewage. That natural byproduct of human development once ended up in the city's water source, Lake Michigan, via the Chicago River. The construction of the sanitary canal provided the means by which the course of the Chicago River could be reversed from flowing into the lake, to the Mississippi River system via the river and canal, in the direction of the less than appreciative residents of downstream towns such as Joliet, Illinois.  

While it may not be in the guidebooks,  the Stevenson corridor remains as vital to Chicago's present, as much as it was to the city's past.

This week, my daughter and I visited three sites, all footsteps from the Stevenson Expressway, that played a tremendous role in the history of the Chicago Portage. As such they are three of the most important historical sites in the city.

The Gap in the Divide

The City of Chicago sits on a continental divide, the St. Lawrence Divide to be exact, straddling two major watersheds, the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi River. A divide is simply the high point in a land mass between two bodies of water. Rain water falling on one side of the divide will eventually drain into the body of water on that side of the divide, while water falling on the opposite side will drain into the body of water on that side. When we imagine continental divides, we tend to think of great mountain ranges crossing a continent. As we have no mountains in Chicago, not even puny hills, the divide needn't be very high at all. The Des Plains River historically has flooded its banks to such an extent that in the most severe cases, flood waters from that river were high enough to breach the divide at its saddle, or lowest point, flowing over the divide and into the Chicago River, thereby temporarily reversing the flow of the Des Plaines. The historic saddle point of the St. Lawrence Divide where it intersects the water course in the city of Chicago, is located near 3100 W. 31st Street, in the neighborhood of Little Village. West of the divide there was once a large mass of flat land (even by Chicago standards), part of the Des Plaines River's flood plain, called Mud Lake. As you can imagine, Mud Lake was a poorly drained swamp that for part of the year was flooded enough to support canoes and other small boats. For the rest of the year Mud Lake was a flat dusty plain which made for relatively easy traversal. It was at this saddle point in the divide where Native Americans cut a notch into the land, breaching the divide, thereby creating during the rainy season, a continuous water path between the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers.  

The site of the historic saddle point of the St. Lawrence Divide in Chicago is now occupied by one of Chicago's newest parks, La Villita Park at 31st Street and Albany. That 22 acre park, dedicated in December, 2014, has an interesting history of its own.

The south entrance to La Villita Park at 31st and Albany in Chicago's Little Village Neighborhood

Where La Villita Park now resides was once the site of a large industrial complex whose occupants included a company that sold and  manufactured asphalt roofing products. In 1989, complaints from neighbors were received by the Illinois EPA about coal tar, a byproduct of the plant, that was present on their property. In 1993, the federal EPA got involved to force the owners of the property to clean up the site of the former plant. Community activists got into the act and working with the city, they turned what was once a toxic wasteland into a public park. You can read details of the struggle here, on the EPA website.

Part of the massive cleanup of the site involved covering the polluted ground with several feet of topsoil. The designers of the park put the new soil to good use, using it to carve berms that place the park several feet above the rest of its surroundings, creating a nice vista of the Little Village neighborhood to the west, and the aforementioned Cook Country Jail to the north and east.. I can't say for sure but perhaps in raising the park above its surroundings, its designers were alluding to the natural divide that the park sits upon. 

As far as I could tell, there is no reference to the tremendous historical significance of the site at the park. Perhaps some day...

The Trail Head

Lack of recognition is not the case with The Chicago Portage National Historic Site, at the western end of Mud Lake and the historic portage trail. Located in the suburb of Lyons, Illinois, the site, dedicated in 1952 is designated as an "affiliated area", owned an operated by the  the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, and listed by the National Park Service. By removing invasive species of plants such as European Buckthorn from the preserve, great pains have been taken to make the site look, feel and smell just as it did when eastbound travelers, first the Native Americans, then the likes of Father Marquette, Louis Jolliet and later, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, disembarked from their canoes and made the relatively painless over-land journey to the South Branch of the Chicago River, seven miles to the east.  

From this website put together by the Friends of the Chicago Portage:

...nearly every site of Chicago’s origin’s has been destroyed. The remains of Fort Dearborn are buried under three layers of Wacker Drive, you can't visit DuSable & Kinzie's cabin, the Portage Trail is completely paved over and old “Mud Lake” is now the site of the world’s largest sewage treatment plant. The Chicago Portage National Historic Site is the only major remnant of the discovery and settlement of Chicago.

The last vestige of Portage Creek which once flowed into the Des Plains River.
Today its flow has been reversed to divert flood waters away from the river.

Water flowing through a swale after a heavy rain, into Portage Creek

The flooded Des Plaines River after a heavy July storm

The southern edge of the Chicago Portage National Historical Site and adjacent industrial land
which one day will hopefully be the site of a visitor center.

BNSF engines rumbling along the tracks marking the northern edge of the preserve,
reminding us of the tremendous significance of the area as a transportation corridor.

Composite photograph of a Bur Oak tree which as the didactic panel on the lower left explains,
more than likely was passed by explorers Jolliet and Marquette as they were led
through the Chicago Portage.

This statue of a Native American guide assisting explorers Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet
as the make their way along the Chicago Portage, greets visitors as they arrive at the Historical Site

Birth of the Canal

The last stop on our tour of historic sites along the Stevenson Corridor was another new Chicago Park District Park, Canal Origins Park. The park is located on Ashland Avenue, at the fork in the South Branch of the Chicago River where the notorious Bubbly Creek (the dumping ground for a century's worth of effluence from the old Stockyards), branches off from the river. It was on this spot on the Fourth of July, 1836, where city fathers and investors stuck their shovels into the ground marking the start of construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. 

The significance of the canal to the city cannot be underestimated. The timing of its conception and construction occurred during a very small window of opportunity that made the difference between success and failure for both the canal and the city. It was the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 connecting Chicago to New York, and with it, capital investments from that city, that made construction of the I&M, and the tremendous growth of the city happen. Had there been a delay of a decade or so in breaking ground for the canal, railroads by then would have gained a foothold in the Midwest, making the canal unnecessary, Had that been the case, Chicago, with its inhospitable swampy natural terrain, could very well have been bypassed in favor of a city built upon more solid ground.  

The workers who labored to build the I&M Canal were largely Irish immigrants, many of whom settled in the neighborhood of Bridgeport where the canal originated. The building of the canal meant that Chicago already had a significant Irish population at the time of the Great Potato Famine that devastated Ireland from 1845 until 1852. Naturally this city became a magnet for many if the 1.5 million people who emigrated from the Erin Isle after that calamity. Along with the opportunity to find work, and therefore survive, there was hardship as the Irish constituted the first underclass of Chicago. Many of them lived in shantytowns (or ghettos as we'd call them today), west and south of the Central Business District. Anti-Irish sentiment reached its peak after the Great Fire of 1871 which began in one of those shantytowns. A reporter for the Chicago Tribune years later confessed that he made up the story of the fire starting in the barn belonging to the O'Leary Family after the drunken Catherine O'Leary carelessly left a lit lantern in her barn after milking her cow. Despite the reporter's confession, Mrs. O'Leary never lived down the accusation and to this day is still blamed for the fire.

But the Irish did have a great advantage over the other immigrant groups who came to Chicago in the 19th century, they spoke English. Combined with strength in their numbers, and the Roman Catholic Church, Chicago's Irish gained a foothold into the organization of this city, first in the police force, then in politics. The Chicago Democratic political machine may not have been created by the Irish, but it was raised to an art by them and for a good long time, Bridgeport was the political geo-center of the City of Chicago. 

Today in Bridgeport, folks living in million dollar homes in new developments along the river, rub shoulders with the descendants of the old 11th Ward, a neighborhood where vestiges of the past such as the ancient Schaller's Pump, tenaciously clung to life and are only now beginning to disappear. The old Stearns Quarry was converted into a spectacular new park now known as Palmisano Park, which uses its site, a combination of the quarry, and a large landfill hill to great effect.

Likewise, Canal Origins Park takes full advantage of its riverfront setting to create an experience that recreates the natural setting (at least as much as possible in the middle of the city), combined with the experience of present day Chicago. Unlike the Chicago Portage site, with the exception of the river, which itself has been greatly altered, everything at Canal Origins Park is the work of human hands. The design of the park is the concept of earth artist Michael Singer whose plantings of native wild flowers dominate the setting. Cutting through the field of wildflowers, (or as a disgruntled neighborhood visitor to the park called them on my first visit to the park ten years ago, weeds), Singer created a narrow path leading from the street to the river, that is meant to evoke the canal. Along the sides of this path are ceramic friezes created by artist Phil Schuster and students under his direction that depict the story of the canal. Sadly, vandals have done a number on the panels and most of the didactic signage, defacing many them with graffiti. and other means. 

What you will not see at Canal Origins Park is any vestige of the I&M Canal itself, as the section of it at its source was replaced by the dredging of the Ship and Sanitary Canal in 1900.

Field of Black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta,
looking south east toward a bridge that carries the CTA Orange Line over Bubbly Creek 

Looking toward South Fork of the Chicago River, popularly known as "Bubbly Creek".

One man's wildflower is another man's weed.
Silphium lacinatum, commonly known as compass plant.
Kudos to my wife for the identification.

Path through park evoking the Illinois and Michigan Canal whose origins this park commemorates.
The path is lined with panels that tell the story of the river and the canal.

Details of one of the panels depicting an early resident of the area,

View from park of the fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River, looking toward Chicago Loop.
The new Chicago Park District boathouse can be seen across Bubbly Creek on the right.

These three places may not be on most folks' bucket lists, but they are places that hold the key to what made Chicago, Chicago. For anyone with more than a passing interest in this town, they're well worth the visit.

Here are the addresses and links to more information about the above sites:

Chicago Portage National Historic Site: 4800 S. Harlem, Lyons, Illinois

Their website

Canal Origins Park: 2701 S. Ashland Avenue

Canal Origins Park on Chicago Park District website

La Villita Park: Main entrance: 2800 S. Sacramento

La Villita Park on Chicago Park District website

A December 11, 2014 Chicago Tribune article on the opening of the park

The Last Ride at Riverview

Inspired by the impending demolition of the 54 year old Western Avenue Overpass which began this week, I took the kids for one last ride up the old roadway for a final chance at a view of the city that will be gone forever. If you recall from two posts ago, that roadway's purpose if you don't know its history, may seem perplexing. It was built to bypass the tremendously popular Chicago icon, Riverview Amusement Park. Perhaps when the overpass was built in 1961, Riverview and its million and a half yearly visitors seemed like a fixture that would be around forever. Alas, six years later after the 1967 season, Riverview closed for good. Long after the Shoot-the-Chutes, the Bobs, the Parachute ride and Aladdin's Castle were turned to scrap and dust, the roadway remained until nature ran its course, and a few years ago a decision had to be made, either rebuild the dilapidated, out-of-date structure, or simply remove and replace it with a conventional roadway. 

Many motorists no doubt would have preferred the former solution but such is life. Sorry to say it, but as of March 1, 2016, the last ride of Riverview is no more.

The Western Avenue overpass as it looked during its last weekend of operation.
Here you see local traffic on the right, while on the left,
some of the final motorists to ever use it "fly" over Belmont Avenue.

After Riverview closed, from a practical standpoint, for drivers on Western the overpass was a nice, but relatively insignificant bonus as it enabled them to avoid only one stoplight. From the street level as you can see, the overpass is something of an eyesore, and as far as I can tell, there was little opposition to its demolition.

The intersection of Belmont, Western and Clybourn.

Of course nothing is ever perfect, and the demise of the overpass will no doubt result in more backups at the five way intersection of Belmont, Western and Clybourn Avenues. That's not counting the horrific congestion its demolition and reconfiguration will cause. The whole project is not scheduled to be completed until September, 2017.

A symbol of the pre-eminence of the automobile in the early sixties, the overpass like the expressways of this city, was built without any consideration of its surroundings. It obscured the main entrance to Riverview on Western Avenue, visually cutting it off from the other side of the street. Visitors arriving on foot from the east had to walk under the overpass whose diminishing ceiling under the north ramp had to have been a nuisance, especially for tall people:

The main entrance to Riverview on Western Avenue before the overpass was built.
The presence of the "Green Hornet" streetcar dates this historic photo (photographer unknown)
 to sometime before 1958.
The structure of the Silver Flash roller coaster is in the background.

This was shot from roughly the same spot as the photograph above,
showing how the overpass would have obscured the view of the entrance from the street.

For an eight year old like me however, walking under the overpass was a prelude to the fun house with its rooms of distorted proportions. But for grownups on foot, the cramped, unwelcoming, somewhat threatening confines of the space underneath the overpass certainly had to diminish the experience of entering the park:

My daughter demonstrating the experience I had at her age while under the overpass, feeling very tall.

I also wanted to show my kids the site of one of the happiest places of my childhood. Unless you have a thing for irony, you'd be hard pressed to apply Riverview's old slogan. "Laugh your troubles away" to the site today. The closest thing that resembles lost Riverview is the huge police radio tower that was built on almost the exact site of the Pair-O-Chutes ride. With a bit of squinting and a whole lot of imagination, you can almost see the old contraption that thrilled and terrified Riverview patrons at the same time:

A rendering of the Pair-O-Chutes at night (artist unknown)
If you use your imagination and squint really hard,
you may be able to conjure up this; but open them...

...and this is what you see, the police tower which sits upon the site of Riverview's Parachute ride.

Of course the functions of the two structures couldn't be more different, and opening your eyes to the reality of the place is like waking from a fantastic dream and finding yourself back within the confines of your old, bleak, hum drum world. If you recall the story of my mother's two delinquent classmates who ditched class one day only to find themselves stuck on top of the parachute ride back in the forties, how appropriate, or ironic it should be that the ride would be replaced by the ultimate symbol of authority. Perhaps that tower should be named for the two boys. Perhaps it already is.

It only gets stranger. As if it were a twisted joke, the police headquarters/courthouse proper sits upon the site of Aladdin's Castle, Riverview's fun house. Your sense of fun would really be tested here, especially if you found yourself checked in as a guest of the police station's iron hotel.

I'm only speculating but I suppose that given Riverview's dubious reputation in its later years for being crime ridden, a lot of folks applauded the fact that the first thing to be built on the old site would be a police headquarters. It was the late sixties after all, a time when the tension between those who loved authority and the police, and those that hated them was even stronger than it is today. That a facility representing the state's authority would be built upon a site that once represented joy, freedom,  and a little bit of controlled mayhem, is very powerful symbol indeed.

As a token effort to pay lip service the old amusement park as well as add a touch of color and levity to an otherwise dour environment, artist Jerry Peart was commissioned in 1980 to create a sculpture, titled, appropriately enough, "Riverview", intended to evoke the feeling of the long lost park. Did he succeed? Well, you be the judge...

Before (photographer unknown)

After

It may be a pleasant work of art of sorts, but there's no question where I'd rather hang out.

For many years, the vast majority of the old site of Riverview was taken up by acre upon acre of concrete, which served as parking spaces for the staff and students of DeVry University. Most of the time the parking spots were empty, making the area great for student drivers, skateboarders and roller bladers but not much else. Recently a few other schools replaced much of the concrete and now there is a little campus of schools that is an improvement:

A new campus has brought some more life to the site.

I shot the photograph above while standing near the site of the famous Bobs roller coaster which would have been to my left, just out of the picture frame. Here you're looking north, in the direction of the Shoot-the-Chutes and the Tunnel of Love, a ride I didn't get the point of until about eight years after Riverview closed. By the time I understood, it was too late...

Riverview Tunnel of Love, 1943 (photographer unknown)

Fortunately there is a small section of the Riverview site that retains some of the atmosphere of the old park. It fronts the river and could legitimately be called Riverview Park, even though that's not really its name. It's called Richard Clark Park and comprises a sliver of the west end of the old Riverview site. Now that the overpass is no more, Clark Park contains the only relics from Riverview that you will find on the site. For starters, I'm told there are cottonwood trees that were around at the time of the amusement park. I spent a good time photographing them about fifteen years ago while working on a photographic project documenting the Chicago River. If you look hard enough, you'll also find some remnants such as footings from the old Shoot-the-Chutes ride:

The Shoot-the-Chutes, the first ride ever built at Riverview,
and the cable railway called the Sky-Ride, the last, (photographer unknown)

My son standing upon what remains of the Shoot-the-Chutes.

Clark Park has a lovely river walk that is perfect for a stroll day or night. Even better, some of the devil-may-care spirit has returned to Riverview in the form of a bike dirt jump and pump track. Without any bikes, my kids still had a blast running up and down this crude but effective obstacle course that takes advantage of some of the remnants and topography of the old picnic grounds that surrounded the Shoot-the-Chutes:

A little bit of the spirit of Riverview lives on...

This looks like fun. If I were about ten years younger I'd try it out myself.

The bike course pictured above, maintained by an independent group, Chicago Area Mountain Bikers, has brought back a little of the fun and mayhem to the north side of Chicago, something it sorely needs.

Last Saturday we went for a final ride on the Western Avenue Overpass, the last ride at Riverview. I asked my children, one on the passenger side, the other on the driver side, to document the ride. Strap yourself in folks for a hair-raising, spine tingling, ride. Hold on for dear life...

Photographs by Rose and Theo Iska

Ok so maybe it wasn't  the Silver Flash, the Comet the Jetstream, the Flying Cars, Hades, the Rotor, the Chute-the-Chutes or even the Wild Mouse. It certainly didn't have the cache of the Bobs, or the Pair-O-Chutes. More than likely, most of the people who used the overpass everyday didn't think much about or even notice it, or the great views of Chicago it provided.

Like the old amusement park it was built around, it had its dark side to go along with the thrills (yes I mean thrills). Eventually the realities of economics, safety and practicality deemed it had to go. So be it. We've been through this before and will again and again. The city, ever growing, ever changing, stops for nothing, least of all memories of a long gone, but very sweet past.

The overpass on its last day of service, February 29,2016.

Goodbye old friend.

FIB's

Here is part one of the report by Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that deals with Chicago's reversal of the flow of the Chicago River, and its role in the possible introduction of an invasive species of fish, the Asian carp into the Great Lakes.

Chicago reversed the flow of the River over 100 years ago if you remember, to avoid dumping its sewage into Lake Michigan, the source of its drinking water. As horrible as the thought of dumping sewage anywhere is, one has to remember that, well as a guy who owned a porn shop explaining his place in society once said to me; "shit is shit, and it has to go somewhere."

So for 110 years the recipients of our effluence have been the communities along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, and ultimately the beleaguered Gulf of Mexico itself. And how you may ask did these communities react to Chicago's action to send its crap their way? Well it's a great story, one that is recounted in the MJS article. Essentially the state of Missouri sought a Supreme Court injunction to stop the opening of the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal. But before the court had a chance to review the case, in the middle of the night of January 17th, 1900, crews were dispatched from Chicago 30 miles downstream to open the canal, instantly making the matter a moot point. It's the Chicago way after all.

It is this same waterway that conservationists fear will be the conduit for a very unwelcome fish to enter Lake Michigan and ultimately the entire Great Lakes ecosystem. The Asian carp was originally introduced into the Mississippi River in the 1970s by catfish farmers to remove algae and particulate matter from their ponds. Periodic flooding made the ponds overflow thus introducing the fish into the Mississippi River. These fish are big, weighing up to 100 pounds, have a rapacious appetite, and are extremely prolific. If they manage to find a way into the Great Lakes, they most certainly will wreak havoc with the ecology of the world's largest supply of fresh water.

Clearly something has to be done and it is looking more and more like the answer is blocking off the Sanitary Canal from Lake Michigan. This would have a deleterious impact on the economy, directly effecting the shipping (predominantly barge) industry which relies on the waterway to move heavy materials from the lake to the river. Clearly the biggest impact however would be the fact that our waste will be released into Lake Michigan, once again, the source of our drinking water.

This scenario may not be as dire as it sounds. Sewage, which is already treated in Chicago before it's released into the water in a process briefly described here, would then be chemically disinfected to remove harmful bacteria that would otherwise contaminate the water supply. This disinfection process is done in virtually every major city in the country already except Chicago. The MJS article goes to great pains to excoriate the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, the governmental body in charge of disposing of the area's waste, for resisting measures that have been standard procedure elsewhere in the country. In this article from the Chicago Tribune, the Reclamation District did its own study which found that chemically treating water not surprisingly has its own ecological drawbacks. To be fair it must be stated that most environmental groups claim that this study is mostly stonewalling on the part of the District.

The MJS article is misleading in implying that Chicago simply dumps its untreated waste directly into the waterways. It states that Chicago's canals contain "bacteria at levels that can be more than 1,000 times higher than what is discharged at Milwaukee's Jones Island sewage treatment plant." This may be true but what the article fails to point out is that Chicago's canals were built specifically for the purpose of transporting diluted, treated water while Milwaukee returns its treated water directly into Lake Michigan, the source of its drinking water. What Egan describes as Chicago's "crude sewer system", was actually, along with Brooklyn's, the first comprehensive combined sewer system constructed in the United States. Chicago's system in fact was an engineering marvel given the city's flat topography. In the 19th Century while Chicago was transporting its diluted sewage away from its water supply, Milwaukee was dumping raw sewage directly into Lake Michigan and to some extent, continues to do so today.

The tone of this one sided MJS article is clearly biased against Chicago, which is their prerogative. But the fact is that if Milwaukee and other cities had the opportunity and wherewithal to address their sanitation issues as Chicago did at the turn of the last century, they most certainly would have done exactly as we did. I find it just a little disingenuous that journalists and the public at large up in the great state of Wisconsin, given the less than stellar record of dealing with their own sewage, feel compelled to bash Chicago in what is turning out to be a supremely complicated problem. Perhaps a little case of the pot calling the kettle black no? But what do I know, I'm just another "fucking Illinois bastard".

Re-reverse the flow?

This interesting plan to help save Lake Michigan comes from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In Chicago we like to boast of our grand undertakings, and the reversal of the flow of the Chicago River was certainly the grandest of the grand. Unfortunately we tend to obfuscate the other side of the story. This is another side.

Almost as enlightening is the comments section where our neighbors to the north profess their never ending love and admiration for us.