Fw: Deep Tunnel Update

[Richard L Whitman <rwhitman@usgs.gov>]

submitted to beachnet by




Mary Ellen Bruesch, MS, RS
Environmental and Disease Control Specialist
City of Milwaukee Health Department
Division of Disease Control and Prevention
841 N. Broadway St.
Room #304
Milwaukee, WI 53202
(414) 286-5744 (o)
(414) 708-5163 (c)
(414) 286-5164 (fax)
mbrues@milwaukee.gov 
http://www.milwaukee.gov

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>>> "Jacquart, Steve " <SJacquart@mmsd.com> 5/16/2006
3:56:31 PM >>>
To:                
Interested Parties
From:                  Kevin
Shafer, P.E., MMSD Executive Director
Re:                
Deep tunnels comparison: Milwaukee vs. Chicago
Date:                
May 15, 2006

MMSD's Deep Tunnel Update

I want you to know that as of the May 12, 2006, rainstorm, MMSD's Deep
Tunnel system has now prevented 60 billion gallons of wastewater from
polluting Lake Michigan since it went on line in 1994.  In addition
to
keeping our waterways cleaner, it's difficult to calculate how many
times the Deep Tunnel prevented sewage from backing up into people's
basements.

I don't have to tell you that our Deep Tunnel has taken its share of
knocks over the years.  However, our region has gone from 50-60 combined
sewer overflows on average each year before the Deep Tunnel went on line
down to slightly more than two per year.  

That's an impressive improvement that has helped spur unprecedented
investment in businesses and condominiums near the RiverWalk in downtown
Milwaukee. We know that we have more work to do in our continuous
efforts to get better and we're prepared for the difficult challenges we
face in protecting our waterways. 

To learn more about the Deep Tunnel and what you can do to help protect
Lake Michigan, I encourage you to check out MMSD's web site at
www.mmsd.com. 

Chicago's Deep Tunnel- The "underground wonder"

Coincidently, last Friday the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of
Greater Chicago held a grand opening for the final leg of its Deep
Tunnel system or "underground wonder," as the Chicago 
Tribune recently editorialized.  I've attached a copy of that glowing
editorial to compare and contrast the huge differences in the way
Chicago and Milwaukee view their respective Deep Tunnel systems.

Note:  Since the beginning of 2006, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation
District of Greater Chicago has reported combined sewer overflows on 22
days (1 billion gallons).(1)  MMSD has had one combined sewer overflow
so far this year (a total of 3.6 million gallons of combined and
separate sewer overflows).

Enclosure:  Chicago Tribune, Chicago's underground wonder, May 11,
2006
(1)                
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago,
http://www.mwrd.org/cso/display.aspx 

Chicago's underground wonder
 
Published May 11, 2006
 
Chicago was founded because of its proximity to water. But for its
entire 169-year history, this city has struggled with that proximity,
which has been both boon and bane. Chicago grew to prosperity from its
beginnings on stinky, flat swamp-land hard by the shore of Lake Michigan
and banks of the Chicago River. But disposing of sewage, draining
floodplains and keeping drinking water safe always have been challenges.
 
Chicago's first great engineering feat to deal with these challenges was
construction of a drinking-water tunnel extending two miles into the
lake in 1867. Ending the city's reliance on polluted shoreline water
helped end the cholera epidemics that had afflicted Chicago for the
previous two decades, killing thousands.
 
A second feat, still considered one of the engineering wonders of the
world, was the reversal of the Chicago River's course in 1900, so that
the city's sewage would flow south rather than being corralled in the
lake.
 
The third of these spectacular feats concludes Friday when the
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago dedicates its
Deep Tunnel project. Drilling 109.4 miles of tunnels 15 to 30 feet in
diameter through limestone took 30 years. Friday is only a formal debut
for a completed system that already has been operating at gradually
increasing levels. Wastewater reservoirs to complement the tunnel system
won't be finished until 2023. But Friday's debut shouldn't come and go
without an acknowledgment of a remarkable construction achievement that
has made a huge difference to many homeowners.
 
The $3 billion project has been under way for so long that many
Chicago-area residents no longer know why it's being done--or have
forgotten about it altogether. But those tunnels, coupled with regional
reservoirs, promise to alleviate flooding and sewage backups that
sometimes still plague low-lying neighborhoods.
 
As long ago as the 1930s, flooding and contamination were chronic
problems. A $3 million sewer channel to protect Oak Park and other
western suburbs was finished in 1937. The Tribune predicted then that
for west suburban homeowners, flooded basements "after nearly every
storm will be a thing of the past."
 
Well, not quite. Drainage problems continued. Deep Tunnel--its formal
name is Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, or TARP--was envisioned in the 1960s
after storms forced the city to pump sewage into the lake in 1954, 1957
and 1961.
 
The basic problem was Chicago's sewerage. It consisted of combined
sewers, common to many older cities. They carried both raw sewage and
storm water in the same pipe. As the region grew, more roadways were
paved and more building foundations sunk. All that growth reduced the
amount of natural ground surface available to soak up storm water. Storm
runoff often exceeded sewage-treatment capacity.
 
How so? A torrential downpour can drop 20 billion gallons of water on
the Chicago area. The early 1970s sewer system and treatment plants
could handle only 1.5 billion gallons a day. That left 18.5 billion
gallons of storm water and sewage with no place to go. That ugly brew
bypassed treatment plants and spilled directly into rivers, streams or
Lake Michigan. Before the Deep Tunnel project, nearly half of the
pollution in Chicago's 70-plus miles of inland waterways came from those
combined sewers.
 
Some of that contaminated water bubbled out of basement drains all over
the area. Chicago would be forced to open the river locks, and
contaminated water would flow into the lake--the primary source of the
area's drinking water. Dozens of times in a typical year, enough rain
fell that sewage backed into homes, businesses and schools, and raw
sewage was discharged into waterways and the lake. The property damage
and chronic health risks were enormous.
 
TARP's mission was to collect and store that overflow in the tunnels and
reservoirs so it could be treated gradually and then safely released
into the waterways--once the storms had passed.
 
Gerald Ford was president and many of today's Chicagoans hadn't yet been
born when the first underground explosion for the first tunnel shook the
intersection of Howard Street and McCormick Boulevard in Skokie. Over
the next three decades, workers in cages descended 300 feet into a dank
subterranean realm populated by giant drilling machines that look like
something out of an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie on another world.
 
Those workers would blast. Drill. Line with concrete. Move on to the
next stretch. Mile after mile until they had completed those 109.4 miles
of tunnels. Thanks to their hard work and the vision of many others,
Friday marks the third milestone of epic proportion in Chicago's long
struggle to manage its proximity to water.
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>