By Ted Schnell • BocaJump
The Elgin City Council will be asked Wednesday, Sept. 14, to approve a grant agreement officials hope will help alleviate some flooding issues on the city’s Southwest Side.
Elgin Management Analyst Aaron Cosentino said Monday that the city has received an Illinois Green Infrastructure Grant totaling $634,000 to install stormwater control devices in the South West Area Neighborhood.
The state grant requires the city to match it to the tune of $117,900, and a staff memo indicates the city already has that money accounted for in its budget for the Lord Street Basin project to separate the combined sewers in that area and, residents hope, end flooding problems they have experienced from time to time. But even as work on that project continues, flooding remains a concern. The combined sewer separation effort in the South West Area Neighborhood is a years-long effort.
Cosentino said the city plans to use three types of devices to help control stormwater runoff in the South West Area Neighborhood.
A staff memo to the City Council on the project states the effort will focus on those areas in SWAN where the sewer separation work is still several years off, and will include the installation of
- 24 to 38 “bioswales” located in parkways;
- at least three modular bioretention basins;
- and one to two permeable paver alleyways.
Some could be installed in 2012
Cosentino said the swales are intended to slow down the flow of stormwater into the storm sewers. “They’ll be like little curb cuts, so that when the water flows down the street, it’ll flow into the parkway, go into this planted area and kind of sit there and infiltrate down into the soil,” he said. Beneath the soil, he continued, will be an under-drain system to eventually recapture that water and send it into the storm sewer — but at a slowed rate, reducing the load on the storm sewer.
The permeable paver alleyways replaces asphalt pavement with porous brick material that allows stormwater to be absorbed in the ground beneath instead of running directly into storm sewers.
The bulk of the work is expected in March through October of 2013 and would conclude in October 2014, Cosentino said. “We’re looking to do a few pilot, little installations in the summer of next year (2012),” he said.
As part of that process, however, he said the city will begin meeting with residents throughout 2012 to explain what the devices are, how they work and ask homeowners to agree to accept them in their parkways. He said the plan is to concentrate the devices in areas throughout the neighborhood, depending on residents’ cooperation.
“It won’t solve the flooding problems, but it will help slow the amount of water that enters the (sewer) system in a storm,” Cosentino said. He added that is it possible for these devices to be overwhelmed as the become saturated during a prolonged rain.
Competitive grant process
Cosentino said the grant is administered by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, and that first-year funding for the grant was just $5 million. He said it is intended specifically for communities like Elgin, whose sewer systems were built long before clean water was a concern.
The competitive grant process drew 150 applicants, including Elgin, who sought $50 million in funding. Elgin’s was the second largest of the 14 projects the IEPA decided to fund with the $5 million, according to the staff memo on the program to the City Council.
Combined sewers carry both wastewater, or sewage, and stormwater. But problems can occur during heavy rains, causing the two to mix. In Elgin’s case, that means raw sewage ends up flowing with stormwater into the Fox River. But also during heavy rains, that raw sewage can back up into residents basements, which occurred several years ago in the South West Area Neighborhood.
The city is in the midst of a decades-long plan to separate the combined sewers with the goal of improving water quality in the Fox River and ending the sewage backups into residents’ homes.
