A $48.7 million flood control plan proposed for the neighborhood near the Park Ridge Country Club is all but dead after aldermen overwhelmingly rejected its kickoff contract.
Meeting as its informal committee-of-the-whole, the Park Ridge City Council voted 5-1 against a $1.167 million agreement with Christopher B. Burke Engineering, saying the costs are too high for minimal protection from future floods.
Despite the vote, aldermen told residents it is not the end of the city’s effort to alleviate stormwater flooding there or in other afflicted areas of the city.
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Ald. Nicholas Milissis, 2nd Ward, said he understands why residents feel that some flood control is better than nothing, but “we would be doing residents and the city a disservice to spend $50 million for questionable relief.”
“I can’t come to grips with spending this much money for this level of protection,” said Ald. Marty Maloney, 7th Ward, who chairs the committee’s public works discussions. “Having said that, I feel just as strongly that we’re not telling residents, ‘you’re on your own’.”
But Ald. Jim Smith, 3rd Ward, who was the lone vote for the contract, said his fellow aldermen “are planning to kick the can down the road again.
“We have a good, solid plan here,” he said.
Monday’s vote put to rest the proposal aldermen debated for more than a year and the engineering contract they previously rejected in July. The deal would have authorized Burke to craft engineering plans for a 10-year storm protection model for the Country Club neighborhood including a new “trunk” or main sewer under Sibley Avenue and a 32-acre-foot underground water storage vault on the Country Club grounds.
An acre-foot is one acre of water one foot deep, equivalent to 325,851 gallons.
Burke’s proposed scope of work included a full topographic survey, hydraulic modeling, geotechnical engineering and soil testing, preliminary and final engineering, restoration of the Country 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 and 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.
While officials said that plan was feasible, its price tag hung over it like the proverbial Sword of Damocles.
“The area is a challenging area. Just because the project’s feasible, that doesn’t mean it’s a wise investment,” City Engineer Sarah Mitchell said on Tuesday.
Aldermen are considering establishing a stormwater utility fee to fund future flood control projects. Four companies submitted bids last week for consulting work, and a recommendation will likely go to the city council in February, Mitchell said.
Park Ridge has worked with Burke since 2009, when the Rosemont-based firm was hired after several storms inundated the city. The firm was to study the sewer system, map the flood-prone neighborhoods and then to develop a flood mitigation plan. A six-year, multi-phase plan was adopted in 2011, funded on a pay-as-you-go basis.
As of November 2013, seven of 10 projects in the plan’s first phase had been completed at a total cost of $5.3 million. They were financed with sewer fee hikes. That left the biggest, most difficult and costliest projects: Mayfield Estates (estimated at $3.3 million), Northwest Park (between $16.6 million) and the Country Club area ($48.7 million).
While the Mayfield Estates and Northwest Park proposals have more straightforward paths to construction, the County Club area’s geography – it’s a low-lying area with a shallow water table, meaning groundwater is close to the surface and is the nexus of three different watersheds – vexes engineering options and potential price tags.
The city and Park Ridge Park District continue discussing details of the Northwest Park proposal, which calls for new storm sewers draining into a 40-acre-foot basin that would be installed in the park.
The Mayfield Estates project, which includes a new storm sewer under Elliot Avenue and a new pump station, is poised to take advantage of the Water Reclamation District’s Dempster Street sewer project, scheduled to begin construction in 2016.
The district will install a new stormwater sewer from Advocate Lutheran General Hospital west to a creek just past Park Ridge Pointe and the Tri-State Tollway (I-294) exit ramp. Plans call for a municipal sewer connection, which requires an inter-governmental agreement between the city and the district. Park Ridge is still waiting for the district to send that agreement.