Reverse the River!

The Chicago River pops up in the news every March when it's dyed green. Have you ever wondered why Lake Michigan isn't subsequently green? You'd be forgiven for thinking that the Chicago River emptied in Lake Michigan, but that's not the case anymore. In this episode, I discuss how a group of politicians and engineers got together to pull off the ultimate reverse Uno card on Mother Nature by reversing the Chicago River to solve their sewage woes. 

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode six of the nifty 50 show. Now after last week's riverine drama between Iowa and Nebraska. We're going to talk about a, another river today, the Chicago river. However, this does not involve any legal battles necessarily. But rather it is a question of health and safety. So the Chicago river is very famous today. Obviously Chicago sits on it. And it's famous because it gets died every March. Which is another story about how that still happens and how it happens. But today, we're going to talk about how they reversed the Chicago river. Which has been noted by many engineers and many engineering societies as one of the greatest accomplishments. Of the late 19th and early 20th century. Before we get into all of that. Let's talk about the actual river. The Chicago river today is considered a system of rivers and canals. And one report said, quote, it never offered much drama in its natural state and the quote. It is roughly about 150 miles long. And its importance does not derive from its length, but rather its location. Obviously cities are founded in strategic locations. Chicago was no different. But why I'm that part of the lake? It's a convenient place for inland navigation. But it's more than convenient for just the Chicago river. Because a mile inland from the lake, there is a 12 to 14 feet Ridge. That separates the Chicago river basin from the Mississippi river basin. This Ridge separates the Chicago river from the Mississippi river basin via the deaths Plains river. And so it is a very easy and natural point for a Portage. And this had been quickly discovered by natives who used it all the time, who then showed the French. The U S took notice of it after the Louisiana purchase, they. Quickly built a Fort at the mouth of the river, Fort Dearborn. This Ridge became particularly important in Chicago's history because it made it. Into a natural transportation hub. But then also, because of this story of reversing the Chicago river. And why are verse river? It seems to be a whole lot of. Work. To go against something nature has already done for thousands of years. Well, Chicago was founded in 1833 at the mouth of the Chicago river on lake Michigan. This small city was already extremely polluted. And it's river. The Chicago river is very lazy. Here's a quick fun fact, Illinois is flatter than Kansas. If you've driven that cross. You can tell very easily that it is. A lot of the rivers are extremely slow moving. And in Chicago. And then if an any other city with a sluggish river, it causes problems because it cannot flush wastewater fast enough. One example of this. Is there was a local butcher that would kill 400 to 500 hogs a week and then dump all of his waste in the river. Now imagine it's a slow river. The river's not moving that fast. The waste just sits in the river. Decaying. With bacteria and who else knows what. Causing problems for everybody else who needs to use the river. The small city tried to pass an ordinance, but they could not enforce it. It was too hard and they were too small. However, within a few short years, Chicago's population explodes. And it was known as one of the fastest growing cities in the world. If not the fastest. For several decades in the 19th century. Now with this population, explosion comes a need for food and therefore more slaughterhouses. Slaughterhouses contributed. Greatly to the danger of the river. It wasn't just slaughterhouses, the Chicago river was also the main dumping ground for all of the city's sewage. Which would then be flushed and flake, Michigan. However. Chicago. Takes their water from the lake. So there's already a problem. If you're using the river to flush away the sewage out of your city and push it into the lake, but then you take water out of the lake. You're setting yourself up for a lot of sadness. And disease. Essentially. And that's what happened for a long time. In 1855. The city commissioned Ellis S Chesbro to design the nation's first comprehensive sewer system. And he designed a system that helped alleviate a lot of the problems, but it did not get rid of them all. Alice S Chesbro as part of this also raised the elevation of the city. Bye 12 feet in some places, they literally lifted the buildings. Put dirt underneath. And then raised the street level. It's impressive. That's a whole nother story for engineering. The system, all of this innovation and this great elevation rise, really to not. I do much. The population is far outstripping, the system's capacity. This would become a very big problem when it rained, because if it rained consistently and hard enough over a period of time. To not necessarily flood majorly, but flooding enough to backup the system. Now you have all the sewage just floating around in the river and not going out. And so. It just. It was not good. And in fact, one section of the river was known as bubbly Creek. Bubbly Creek. Was. Notorious stretch beyond or downriver from slaughterhouses. Where they would dump so much organic matter into the river, that one, this organic matter sink. It would create a sludge first off on top mixing in with normal reverse sediment. But then the decaying matter at the bottom of the river, it would release so much methane that it would bubbled. And I'm picturing something like the little mud pots up in Yellowstone. This very fit, liquid being. Just. Gurgling bubbling. And smelling because it's methane. Now you're just becoming. A massive problem. I mean, Gross. It just sounds gross. You can't see much about it. It's just nasty. And slaughter houses keep being built over and over and over more and more and more and more because of the civil war and because of Chicago's natural transportation links. In 1864, Chicago said, well, we have to fix this. Let's build tunnels under lake Michigan, so we can push the water and take farther out. It worked for 10 years and 1874. They had to extend it two more miles. Under the lake. So now you're far, Probably not far enough for some people. Anyway. So in 1874, the tunnels have been pushed out. The census in 1870 recorded a population of just under 300,000 people. It's a lot of people for a very tiny river to handle all of the waste, as well as just the natural things. Cities need. And in 1871, you have the great Chicago fire. Which destroys a lot of Chicago. They use the water. But imagine. Bubbly Creek. Slow moving. The river stank. It just, you have to conjure up images. Or you don't want to. People living in Chicago, you'd probably walk across the bridge and was told your nose or ran across the bridge. I don't know. I don't know how you'd do that. This then caused wealthy citizens to buy bottled water. So now there's a nice class disparity. I can afford to drink non river water, but all the poor people get stuck with it. The city knows the city really knows that there is a massive problem, and if they don't fix it, There's going to be. Just. You have an epidemic you have. A really bad circumstance. And all of a sudden you have. A lot of your population dying because of the water quality. In 1885, there was a massive rainstorm that flooded the area. And it flooded the era so much that the desk Plains river over top to the Portage and then. Started to flesh the Chicago river. However it flushed it so much that it was starting to really push out the filter into the middle of the lake or farther out. Close to intake valves. Now only in offshore wind really kept a lot of the floating disgustingness from going out that far. It didn't help because then it became a massive sensationalized account. People wanted to claim that anybody who got sick after this, it was the water's fault. The lake. All of the river and now they're clamoring for a solution and people are freaked out. This spurs, the local government into action. After some political maneuvering for a couple of years, On May 29th, 1889, the Illinois general assembly approved the act to create sanitary districts and to remove obstructions in the desk, Plains and Illinois rivers. This creates the sanitary district of Chicago, which covers. Approximately 185 square miles. Their first real goal was to reverse the Chicago river. To then flush all the waste. Downriver. The Mississippi. Via a canal. They drew up a plan to draw water from lake Michigan, push it through a series of locks, thereby reversing the Chicago river and sending the diluted wastewater down the Mississippi river. But then at the same time, create a waterway for larger ships to traverse the Portage. Because up until a canal, you'd have to carry your bouts. Doesn't really make much sense. By the late 19th century, there's no way or hauling a lake freighter over that or anything reasonable that can get a lot of goods down between the two. Water bodies. So by creating this canal that can solve two problems at the same time. Now, of course, this makes St Louis quite angry, which we'll get into at the end. But then also by taking water from the lake and pushing it through the river, reversing the river, pushing it through a canal and into the Mississippi, they would then protect their drinking water. It was a win-win win. And that's your St. Louis. So this also helped the desk, planes and Illinois rivers. Because they like the Chicago rivers were sluggish and prone to flooding. By building the canal, they just managed to solve a lot of the regions problems. And Marchioness. They didn't just build that canal, but they built many others. Two of the notable ones being the north shore channel, which would drain marshy areas to the north and then pull lake water into the north branch of the Chicago river. And then the CALSAC channel to reverse. The Calumet rivers. Today there are 61.3 miles. Of canals in the Chicago area. Thanks to the sanitary district. However one to focus on the Chicago sanitary and ship canal. This canal is 20 miles long, 24 feet deep and 160 feet wide. No small feat. It took eight years and 15,000 workers to build. And for many of these workers, your wage was 15 cents an hour. And then you lived in a company town where they promptly. Robbed you a lot of that wage. However, these workers were extremely efficient. And impressive. Because they removed 42 million, 340,000 cubic yards of soil and rock. The methods at which they did this became so famous that they became known as the Chicago school of earth moving. It influenced the building of the Panama canal, which would happen a little later. Initially all of this was done by hand. Crazy. You spend hours just with a shovel. There's a lot of hard rock. But then later complex series of machines and conveyor belts, improved working conditions. And efficiency. Part of this though, wasn't that you just built the canal and then pushed water through. They also had to divert the desk Plains river in 2013 mile long channel. That paralleled a good portion of. Their work area. It's a lot. There's a lot that's going on here. They also built 31 bridges. And then a massive control center at Lockport where the canal ended. And this is where. A lot of the water management happens. As I mentioned earlier, it didn't just solve the sewage problem, but also gave Chicago stronger transportation minks. However, they had to build a massive water reclamation plant. A lot of it is today treated at the Stickney water reclamation plant which is one of the largest in the world. And this plant is able to treat 1 million gallons of wastewater in one minute. So that's about 1.5 Olympic pools worth of water. Every minute. They really solved Chicago sewage problem. The river was clean. It all was. All this lake water's nice and fresh. No more stinky summers. Well St. Louis is now ticked off because you're forcing the Chicago sewage into the desert Plains river. Which has then the Illinois river. Which then dumps everything into the Mississippi river. St. Louis takes its drinking water from the Mississippi. They threatened to file an injunction. They didn't really follow up, but a couple of years later, the state of Missouri sues the state of Illinois. This is 1906. However, the Supreme court sides with Illinois saying that they could not prove any threat to the city of St. Louis. By then all of it's so diluted. Plus it's being treated. Before all of its dumped. As I mentioned in another episode, I love when states Sue each other. It's just fascinating. It's not really all United. Is it? So the Chicago river today. All the drinking water has been saved. They don't have the same problems anymore. Well, hooray. Chicago is now the third largest city in the United States. And one of the largest Metro areas and still one of the main transportation hubs of the country. In 1999, the American society of. Civil engineers named the system, a quote, civil engineering monument of the millennium and quote. That's impressive. I mean, to move all of that. They have to get some award, even if it was almost a century later. Now, despite reversing. The river. The river will sometimes flow in two directions during the wintertime. And this has been proven by studies at the university of Illinois. At Urbana champagne. The surface water will flow east to west. Which is how it's supposed to work. Drawing water from the lake, taking it west of the Chicago river and then down river, the Mississippi. However near the river bed. The water can travel west east out into the lake. Fascinating. How that still works. The state of Illinois still issues, advisories against eating any fish caught in the river. It is still an urban river. It still is. Polluted, especially when you consider other. Rivers in the United States. So they advise you not to eat what you catch, but it is still a very famous recreational fishing site. Sometimes they pull a reverse card on the reverse much like an UNO. And push the river back out to the lake. This happens when there is a severe threat of flooding. It did occur in July. Of 2023. But they open it and reverse it. For just under 7.5 hours. So it's not like this huge, oh, we're going to reverse it for a minute. No, it's literally a matter of hours when there's that immediate threat, flush it out into the lake and then they will reverse that again. And start pushing it out. Through the canal. It doesn't happen that often, the last time it happened was in 2020, and then it happened in 2019. It's very notable when it happens. I mean, I found this out through a news article. That's how. That's how rare it is. And much in the same way. They still do close beaches after just in case any of the water pollution. Makes the water quality unsafe at the beach. However the. The news article said that within a day or two. All but one beaches have been reopened. So. That's good. But that's the reversal of the Chicago river. Crazy. They managed to. Solve a city's problems make it better than it was before. And then also. Have an engineering feat that is still admired by engineers today. Impressive. So next time you're in Chicago or you see it. Coming up. It's going to be dyed green for St. Patrick's day. It's reversed. They managed to go against nature and reverse it. And thereby. For solve their sewage down to St. Louis. Anyway. Thanks for listening today. And. We'll see you next time. When we talk about a Royal family and its many ties to the United States.