Chicago’s beaches were open Sunday, June 21st, for locals to enjoy the official first day of summer even if sewage being dumped into the lake may have prompted caution in some areas. The Chicago Park District flew yellow flags over the Oak Street and Montrose beaches as part of its notification system to alert swimmers of the "low to moderate" traces of E. coli bacteria found in the water.
Wait ... there's E. coli floating in the waters of two Chicago beaches? Isn't that bad?
In fact, most strains of the Escherichia coli bacteria are harmless — high counts of bacterial colonies in Lake Michigan can be indicative of other hazards though.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns that the presence of E. coli in water is a strong indication of recent sewage or animal waste contamination. This is because strains of completely benign E. coli bacteria live in the gut of nearly all warm blooded animals, including humans. It is among the invisible menagerie of human flora residing in our bodies that play a role in beneficial, even necessary biological functions.
The E. coli bacteria in your lower intestine provides you with vitamin K2 and prevents infection from harmful bacteria.
Serotype O157:H7 is the kind of E. coli that you hear about on the news. It causes food poisoning, bloody diarrhea and can even lead to complete kidney failure and death. Young children and the elderly are the most vulnerable to the worst of its effects. It is contracted by ingesting food or water that has been contaminated by the disease.
So, the presence of E. coli bacteria is not necessarily a threat to the swimmers on Chicago’s beaches. More dangerous and disturbing is what the occasionally high levels of E. coli bacteria imply — there’s poo in Lake Michigan, and it’s probably human.
Fecal contamination of water sources spreads a host of dangerous pathogens like Salmonella, Shigella and the aforementioned E. coli O157:H7.
This begs the more disturbing and fundamental question; how does human fecal matter get into Lake Michigan? And perhaps equally as important; what’s being done to stop it?
The city of Chicago and some of its older suburbs have what is called a combined sewer system. It’s an antiquated system that combines sanitary sewage and storm water runoff.
Under normal conditions, the rain and sewage mixture is sent to one of the seven wastewater treatment plants throughout Cook County operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) where the physical, chemical and biological contaminants are removed and the treated water is returned to the Great Lakes Basin by way of the Chicago River.
However, during one of the heavy rainstorms that occasionally assault Chicagoland, the combined system can become overloaded. Excess wastewater is discharged into the river and its adjoining canals.
Perhaps the storms of Friday, June 16th, were responsible for combined sewer overflow that led to beach closings the following Sunday. There is no way to know for sure because the Water Reclamation District was given complete authority over storm water management in Cook County by the Illinois General Assembly in 2004. The MWRD is under no obligation to municipal agencies, like the Chicago Park District, to report instances of sewer overflow. It is the MWRD’s prerogative to decide all storm water management issues internally and to report overflow only if they are bound to by extreme circumstances.
But the MWRD has already initiated an ambitious plan to curb overflow, if not eliminate it completely. Begun in 1975 with a cost in the $4 billion range, the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), is one of the greatest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in terms of scope, cost and time frame.
Though not yet functioning at full capacity, TARP is designed to divert excess wastewater through a 109 mile network of tunnels that are up to 33 feet in diameter. The deep tunnels were bored into the limestone rock 240 to 350 feet beneath Chicago.
The tunnels carry the excess wastewater to the nearest operational reservoir, currently Thornton Quarry, one of the largest aggregate quarries in the world with a 3.1 billion gallon storage capacity at present.
This is where the pathogen-laden sewage is safely retained to await the treatment process after the storm surge has subsided. A far better place for it, I think we can all agree, than the shores of our beautiful beaches.
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Len Kody
South Sider. Comics Writer. Daily Daley Contributor. Editorial Intern. More
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