A flood control plan for Park Ridge’s Country Club neighborhood will return to the City Council in January, six months after aldermen put it on hold to get a second opinion that they then decided to forgo.
Representatives from Christopher B. Burke Engineering on Jan. 12 will provide a review of work completed since 2009 and a recap of the three major projects currently planned for the Mayfair Estates, Northwest Park and Country Club neighborhoods.
“There’s a lot of bad information out there, and it’s time to have them come in and speak on what’s going on,” Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim told aldermen Monday night.
Sarah Mitchell, city engineer, said Tuesday officials also will resubmit a proposed $1.167 million contract with Burke to draft an engineering plan for stormwater protection in the areas adjacent to the Park Ridge Country Club. It’s the same proposal that was submitted in July: a 10-year storm protection model including a new trunk or main sewer under Sibley Avenue and a 32-acre-foot underground water storage vault on the club grounds.
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Burke’s proposed scope of work includes a full topographic survey, hydraulic modeling, geotechnical engineering and soil testing, preliminary and final engineering, restoration of the club’s golf course after construction and coordination with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the state’s Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — all of which must approve projects that involve sewer work and stormwater access to the Des Plaines River.
When residents objected to that plan as minimal flood protection, aldermen called for a second opinion. In October, aldermen informally agreed 5-2 in committee to hire Aurora-based engineering firm Crawford, Murphy & Tilly, Inc., for $37,450 to review Burke’s plan and double-check whether other viable options exist to maximize flood protection for the area between Western and Greenwood avenues and Laverne Avenue and Northwest Highway.
A week later, a 4-3 vote rejected hiring CM&T, which left Burke’s plan as the only readily available option.
Park Ridge has worked with Burke Engineering since 2009, when the Rosemont-based firm was hired after several storms inundated the city. The company was asked to study Park Ridge’s sewer system, map its neighborhoods and then develop a flood mitigation plan. A six-year, multiphase plan was adopted in 2011, funded on a pay-as-you-go basis.
By November 2013, seven of 10 projects in the plan’s first phase had been completed at a cost of $5.3 million, paid for with sewer fee increases.
That left the biggest and costliest projects: Mayfield Estates (estimated to cost between $1.8 million and $2.3 million), Northwest Park (between $11.4 million and $28 million) and the Country Club area (between $23.1 million and $48.7 million).
While the Mayfair Estates and Northwest Park proposals have more straightforward paths to construction, the County Club area’s geography — low-lying with a shallow water table, meaning groundwater is close to the surface, and the nexus of three different watersheds — continues to vex from an engineering and cost standpoint.
The Mayfair Estates project is poised to take advantage of the Water Reclamation District’s Dempster Street sewer project, scheduled to begin in 2015. Plans call for a sewer connection, which requires a formal intergovernmental agreement between the city and the district.
City officials are waiting for the Water Reclamation District to send that agreement, Mitchell said.
While city engineers have been meeting with their counterparts at the Park Ridge Park District to discuss the Northwest Park proposal, there is not much more that can be done until funding is found, she said. One possible funding source is a stormwater utility fee. Park Ridge has issued a request for proposals to hire a consultant who would help determine whether Park Ridge should establish such a fee to fund ongoing flood control work and how such a fee would be administered. Bids are due by Jan. 6.