|
| Home |
       SUMMARY OF CURRENT CONDITIONS Flooding along the Des Plaines River has steadily increased in severity as farming and development have replaced natural vegetation and porous soils with crops, lawns, roofs and pavement. While formerly the soils soaked most rainfall into the ground, now most runs off developed lands into the river. The river has not evolved to handle these additional flows, so it leaves its banks often enough to be a serious threat to residents, businesses and traffic. Major flooding has occurred along the Des Plaines River fifteen times in the past sixty years. The floods in 1986 and 1987 caused more than $100 million in damages to more than 10,000 structures. More than 15,000 residents were evacuated during the 1986 flood. Following the 1987 flood, the second time in ten months that the president declared a "major disaster" on the Des Plaines, the Corps of Engineers was authorized to conduct a flood damage reduction study. In the Fall of 1996, the Corps of Engineers released its draft report. Unfortunately, the Corps was only authorized to consider limited options for protecting against flooding. They did not consider options that would require "implausible" changes in the existing institutional framework. Thus, the development patterns and design standards that have created the flood problems were assumed to remain, and future development was assumed to resemble current development. The draft plan developed by the Corps consisted of six flood storage reservoirs, four lateral storage areas, expansion of an existing reservoir, and five levees. The plan would cost at least $73 million. Nearly all of the construction was assumed to occur on land owned by forest preserve districts. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Corps took the plan to local agencies in an attempt to arrive at a "Locally Preferred Plan. "Not surprisingly, the forest preserve districts have not been enthusiastic about so much construction on their lands. Also, the local agencies were not prepared to make major decisions about the plan in the short time period allotted. So it has been decided to issue an "interim" plan that will contain some of the measures and leave others to be dealt with at a later date - perhaps in two years. The plan as it now is being prepared for Congressional action will, at most, contain five structures and cost about $20,000,000. A very important htmlect of even the original plan that has not been widely recognized is that, by themselves, the flood storage facilities would not provide reductions in flood hazards for the majority of the flood victims that are not protected by levees. They may reduce the rate of increase in the flood hazard, and the length of time flooding would inundate some areas, but for most victims flooding can be expected to increase as upstream development continues to change the nature of the watershed. For example, elevations of the 100-year flood in heavily damaged areas within and near the City of Des Plaines will increase by as much as 1.4 feet because of increased runoff from new development even if the Corps plan is fully implemented. About the Team Call for Action | About the Team | Current Conditions | Issues | What You Can Do | E-Mail |
