Mother Nature’s foul mood over the last couple weeks has Little Calumet River Basin Commission Executive Director Dan Repay waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Several days of oppressive heat and high humidity, culminating two more severe storms July 3 and 4, have all but tapped out the Chicagoland area’s water system, Repay said Monday. And if there isn’t at least a week of dry, sunny weather, the Little Calumet River will continue to threaten basements and municipal stormwater systems indefinitely.
“We got an update from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago this morning, and the Thornton Quarry (on the right side of I-294 heading West) is at 94% full,” he said. “That’s 7.3 billion gallons of water. Yes, with a ‘b.’”
It may seem like the quarry would have nothing to do with Northwest Indiana, but the Little Cal converges with Thorn Creek on the Illinois side north of the quarry, he said. When the water from the creek drains into the quarry, the Little Cal diverts through the creek and the water flows.
Now, there’s nowhere the water can go.
“Think of it as a highway going from four lanes down to one; everything gets backed up,” Repay said. “The river will rise exponentially without a relief valve.
“And think about this, too: We got notified by the Army Corps of Engineers today that Lake Michigan has seven inches of water above where its waterline was sitting last year at this time. Imagine all of Lake Michigan and put seven more inches of water on top of it. That’s a lot of water.”
Nevertheless, Repay and his team are prepared to do whatever they can if more rain comes. He just really hopes it doesn’t.
“We’ll be ready and react accordingly,” he said.
An expansive ridge of high pressure developed and intensified across the Tennessee River Valley to start the last week of June, according to the National Weather Service. The worst of it started June 30, when dewpoints in the upper 70s combined with air temperatures in the low to mid 90s to result in widespread heat indices of 105 to 110 degrees.
By Friday, two storms brought extensive damaging straight-line winds to much of the Chicago metro, one in the afternoon and then a stronger one in the evening that brought flooding. A third storm on the 4th brought flooding all over the area, the NWS reported.
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In a Monday release, Hammond Sanitary District officials said the heavy rainfall on Friday overwhelmed drainage systems across the region and led to flooding at the headworks building of its Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Officials said it appears that incoming utility power feeds fluctuated and power was lost. Once the plant’s backup generator started and power was reintroduced, some of the electrical equipment in the headworks had already been affected by floodwater, which caused protective breakers to trip. Breakers trip to de-energize equipment to protect it and to keep personnel safe, but as a results, pumping could not resume automatically, the HSD release stated. When electricians arrived on site and systematically brought individual sections of the headworks back online, only then could pumping operations resume.
Outside contractors and HSD plant personnel have been working “around the clock” to bring the facility back to full capacity and a full risk assessment is being conducted to understand exactly what happened, and what improvements will make the plant more resilient against future extreme-weather events, the release stated.
“I want to thank the plant operators, the electricians, our contractors, and our public works crews for their tireless work under difficult conditions,” stated Milan Kruszynski, District Manager, HSD, in the release. “Their response protected our infrastructure and our community. I also want to assure Hammond residents that public safety and the protection of our waterways remain our highest priorities as recovery continues.”
Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott said it was a storm that tested the city’s systems.
“Our team’s response kept a difficult situation from becoming far worse, and we are already at work identifying what we can do better,” McDermott said in the release. “We will be transparent with our residents as we learn more.”
The storms also took out Highland’s July 4th Fest Saturday evening due to standing water submerging electrical cords, Clerk-Treasurer Mark Herak told the Post-Tribune.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.