ILLINOIS WATER SCARCITY

IN A WORLD OF DWINDLING RIVERS AND COLLAPSING AQUIFERS, WE NEED TO MOVE AWAY FROM SINGLE-USE WATER.

Chicago can lead the way in water recycling

The city on the lake has the world’s largest water storage system known as the Deep Tunnel or TARP (Tunnel and Reservoir Plan), as well as the world’s largest wastewater treatment plant. Currently, we flush usable water (up to 11 billion gallons) down the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal where it can flow all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Source: Illustration by David Wilson, Belt Magazine, 2020.

Instead of sending freshwater into the salty gulf, we can recycle this water and prevent a growing water crisis in Illinois.

Although Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River form the borders of Illinois, there is a growing water crisis in the state.

The Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer on which millions of people depend is collapsing.

The emergency is most acute in and around Joliet, Illinois’ third largest city, where aquifer levels have dropped 800 feet and will soon be non-viable. Joliet and a consortium of neighboring communities have applied to receive treated Lake Michigan drinking water from Chicago.

A freshwater pipeline will run to Joliet by 2030.

Source: Abrams et al., “Changing Groundwater Levels.” Illinois State Water Survey, 2015

The Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer on which millions of people depend is collapsing.

A freshwater pipeline will run to Joliet by 2030.

Source: Abrams et al., “Changing Groundwater Levels.” Illinois State Water Survey, 2015

Sustaining communities above a depleted aquifer is a necessary humanitarian project. However, the Joliet area has a large industrial footprint, mushrooming warehouses, and trucking transfer stations. These enterprises use a lot of water but do not require drinking water.

By meeting their needs with recycled water, we can secure economic growth while preserving Lake Michigan water for human health and sanitation and ecosystem viability.

Supplying industry with recycled water can secure Illinois in the long-term. A number of other Illinois communities dependent on the depleted aquifer are expected to apply for allocations of Lake Michigan water. The lake is not limitless and Illinois has a diversion limit of 2.1 billion gallons a day set by the U.S. Supreme Court.

We should not reach a point where human water needs cannot be met in Illinois because heavy industry is supplied with drinking water.

Industrial water reuse is the solution.

A dual-pipeline system can meet current and projected water demand in Illinois. In the dual-pipeline system, one line is dedicated to treated Lake Michigan water for domestic supply and a second line is dedicated to treated water from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (recycled water) to support industrial needs.

We model water recycling and the dual-pipeline system on the Chicago-Joliet water transfer. Including recycled water in this transfer is feasible and will have positive economic, environmental, and social effects. The model can be implemented for every new community requesting Lake Michigan water. Recycled water will supply industrial, commercial, and potentially, some irrigation needs.

The benefit is a future in which the Illinois coastline produces the world’s best water for multiple uses and supplies it to other municipalities and counties to enable them to flourish.

Lake Michigan water will reliably flow through millions of Illinois taps and pipes, attracting enterprise and population to the region as a whole.

Media

When the water wars come: Inside the plans for a pipeline between Joliet and Chicago

By S. Nicole Lane, Chicago Reader
November 2023

Currently, in Middle America, there’s a city running out of water. No, it’s not in California or Arizona. It’s 44 miles from the shores of Lake Michigan.