Carpentersville may need to spend more than $4 million to bury water and sewer lines below the bottom of the Fox River because dam removal has lowered water levels, officials said.
A water main and a sewer line running along the river’s bottom were exposed this spring, requiring the village to cover them with gravel, Village Manager Brad Stewart said. While the pipes were not damaged and are now “functionally protected,” an engineering review recommended the village bury a new set of pipes at a deeper level, he said.
Preliminary estimates from engineering consultant HR Green put the cost at $3.5 million to $4.2 million.
While the village can afford to pay for the work, the village is pursuing grant money from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to help fund the unexpected expenditure, Stewart said. Grants of up to $5 million are available and require a municipality to provide a 20% match, he said.
Village President John Skillman said he and staff have been speaking with local state legislators, including state Senator Cristina Castro, D-Elgin, and state Reps. Anna Moeller, D-Elgin, Suzanne Ness, D-Crystal Lake, and Don DeWitt, R-St. Charles, about the situation.
Skillman noted that installing a deeper sewer line is also being a good neighbor to towns downstream.
“If there were any break in the (existing) sewer line running through the river, it would affect the Fox’s water quality, meaning any waste that got into the water would also affect Elgin, which gets its drinking water from the river,” he said.
Stewart said the two lines in question have been there for about 40 years.
“In my opinion, planning should have foreseen changes in the water levels,” he said. “At no point were we told that water levels near historic lows might affect such lines.”
The dam was owned and maintained by the Forest Preserve District of Kane County. Plans to remove it were in the works for nearly a decade and ultimately cost about $1.4 million when the work was done between September and December 2024.
Its removal is part of a broader initiative from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take out nine Fox River dams — including those in Elgin and South Elgin — for ecological reasons.
A dry winter and efforts to maintain higher water levels in the northern Chain of Lakes lowered the depth of the river locally and contributed to silt and rock formations appearing in the Fox from south of the Longmeadow Parkway bridge to near the footbridge over the river between East and West Dundee, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Officials also said changes in the river are most likely a temporary result of the dam’s removal.
Jeff Freeman, CEO of Engineering Enterprises Inc., called the exposed pipes in Carpentersville an unintended consequence of dam removal and one of many factors municipalities need to consider when making plans to alter the waterway.
It’s likely there are utility crossings going through the river close to most of the dams and, depending on records, towns might not know exactly where they are, Freeman said.
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His firm has been consulting with several communities about taking out their dams, including South Elgin and Elgin.
In June 2024, the Elgin City Council hired Engineering Enterprises and the University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering to conduct a $130,000 study looking at sediment movement and how the channel could change if the Kimball Street dam were removed. Elgin’s water treatment plant is above the dam and certain water levels need to be maintained for the plant to function properly.
Computer model simulation results should be ready in the next few months, Freeman said. The next step will be building a physical model in a lab to see what results.
Elgin has a number of water and sewer lines under the river, one of which dates to the early 1900s, according to Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain.
“Carpentersville can be seen as a test case for everybody,” Kaptain said. “Every community is going to have unique circumstances but should take into account what happened there.”
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.