Chicago Flood Defenses in Need of Update
By D.J. Siegel/Chicago
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The Chicago Harbor has a new 5,000-square-foot, $5.5 million control house for its locks, a gleaming, streamlined metal structure just south of Navy Pier set to open on Oct. 26. Whether the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers will receive enough money to finish the harbor rehabilitation project and replace the rundown lock gates is not yet clear. Waiting too long to replace the gates could be potentially disastrous, according to Chicago harbor officials. The locks were built in 1938 to control pollution and navigation between the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. They are currently the second busiest in the U.S. and are the only locks in the country to rely on gravity rather than pumps to shift water levels. According to Greg Vejvoda, an Army Corps engineer and Lock Master for Chicago Harbor, the lock “is very simple, it’s all gravity. All we do is open the gates at one end or the other and either let water out or water in.” |
Vejvoda estimates that up to 40,000 commercial and recreational boats will pass through the locks in 2007, requiring the locks to open nearly 17,000 times. The lock gates have broken down several times in recent years, and each incident proved costly in terms of both time and money. A barge repair crew must travel from Peoria, and if the locks need to be drained, the process can take days. Commercial and recreational boats must be rerouted through the Des Plaines River, an extra 60-mile trip. “These gates are so old, things break at any given time for no reason at all…that’s why we’ve been doing a lot of preventative maintenance and trying to take care of the big things,” Vejvoda said. The Corps has already spent an estimated $17 million on lock repairs. Replacing the gates will cost upwards of $20 million. That's a small investment compared with billions of dollars in flood damage to downtown Chicago should the locks fail during heavy rains. According to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago, rainfall of just three inches could cause the Chicago River to rise over five feet. If the lock gates break down during that kind of downpour, the river could overflow and pour millions of gallons of water into the downtown area. The MWRD estimates that this would prove more disastrous than the 1992 Chicago tunnel flood, when a hole was punched through abandoned utility tunnels, allowing the Chicago River to flood basements throughout the Loop. Lock safety measures are in place, and the likelihood of the river and lake lock gates failing simultaneously is slim. But Vejvoda cautions that “timing is everything. If [the locks] fail at the wrong time, then we’re out of luck.” At 69 years of age, the locks are already “living on borrowed time,” Vejvoda said. “[The locks] are basically designed for a 50-year life span, so we’re about 19 years beyond ours.” Meanwhile, the Corps waits for funding from Congress to replace the failing gates. “All of the Corps’ money for maintaining and operating structures like this throughout the country are put into a national pool and prioritized,” explained Lynne Whalen, supervisor in the Army Corps Chief Public Affairs Office. “It all depends on where the priority is in any given year, where the money is going to go…You have to deal with the most immediate needs first.” Whalen admits that “the lock is functioning, but it will need repair…we’re concerned about it.” - As originally reported on Medill News Service, October 9, 2007 |