We (Steel-Fab) are currently in the middle of working on a Project for the Water District of Chicago..... Blast at Thornton Quarry propels Deep Tunnel project Work will create reservoir to hold billions of gallons of storm water, sewer water overflow September 24, 2013|By Andy Grimm, Chicago Tribune reporter A small crowd gathered Monday at the lip of the mammoth Thornton Quarry, all eyes fixed on an outcropping of dolomite nearly 300 feet below the shoulder of the westbound lanes of Interstate 80. A ripple shot through the two-story rock formation, and it collapsed amid a small, dusty landslide. And so construction of the largest portion to date of the decades-in-the-making Deep Tunnel floodwater control system began with a bang. That was fun, said Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Kathleen Therese Meany, smiling broadly as she turned away from the detonator box. When it goes online in 2015, the Thornton Composite Reservoir will hold 7.9 billion gallons of storm water and sanitary sewer water from more than a dozen south suburban towns. The Thornton project will create the largest reservoir of its kind in the world and is the latest engineering marvel in nearly two centuries of trying to keep Chicagoland from reverting to its swampland roots while not turning Lake Michigan into a cesspool. The blast also signals a shift in the landmark, 1,000-acre quarry that has been mined since 1837 and once was part of the industrial empire of Chicagos Crown family. The section of the quarry north of I-80 eventually will connect via a 30-foot-diameter tunnel to an 8-mile southerly section of the cavernous Deep Tunnel project. Mining will continue for decades in the larger portion of the quarry south of I-80, officials said. By 2017, Thornton will lose the title of worlds largest reservoir to another Deep Tunnel project, a 10 billion-gallon reservoir in McCook. All told, more than $35 billion has been spent on Deep Tunnel projects since work began in the late 1970s, and work wont be finished until at least 2029. This is one of the most visionary projects that has ever been done, said water district Executive Director David St. Pierre. He paraphrased legendary urban planner Daniel Burnham while commenting on the skepticism that has come with the Deep Tunnel systems high expectations and generational timeline. We live in a city of no small plans. This is certainly no small plan. The 30-story-deep reservoir will fill like a regional bathtub during massive storms that threaten to overwhelm local sewer systems, a problem that has grown worse with more frequent and intense downpours in recent years and as development has replaced open, absorbent land with rooftops and pavement. The Deep Tunnel project, a cavernous underground network of tunnels connecting about 350 square miles of storm sewers across the county, was first conceived in the 1960s. As it did back then, much of the regions storm water travels through combined sewer systems that collect rainwater as well as wastewater for homes and industrial sites. When those sewers become overfilled, they back up into basements or have to be emptied into streams and channels that feed into Lake Michigan, with a single storm sometimes forcing billions of gallons of bacteria-laden untreated sewage into the source of much of the regions drinking water. Concerns about sewage entering Lake Michigan, and massive engineering feats intended to thwart such pollution, date back to the earliest days of Chicago history. Efforts to divert the flow of the Chicago River from the lake began as early as the mid-19th century, around the time the first quarries opened in Thornton.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 18:52:48 +0000
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