CHICAGO | General Discussions

[Rizzo]

Increased rainfall will be Chicago’s near term problem to deal with. It’s already happening, especially in areas with inadequate drainage infrastructure. The city already deals with a combined storm/sanitary system that will be stressed locally, not just major waterways and detention.

The city will need incentivize alternative drainage at the source with rain collection cisterns in basements and backyards and permeable pavers in alleys and streets. In essence, moderating the problem as there’s no real solution to stop it.

[left of center]

Yeah, that article is mostly sensationalized nonsense. While the city will definitely have to deal with not only more rainfall overall, but more sudden rainfall that has a month's worth of rain fall in a matter of a few hours, the lake is NOT the ocean (as many of the previous posts have pointed out as well). If Lake Michigan rises to the point that it begins breaching its historic coastline and flooding populated areas, we can always open the locks and have excess water flow down the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico in order to help regulate lake levels. There are some complexities with doing this, as legally the city can only divert a certain amount of water annually, but that's something that we can fix with legislation. A rising Atlantic Ocean is not going to respond to political will.

Chicago will have problems due to climate change, but those problems will pale in comparison to what cities like Miami, New York, New Orleans, etc. will have to face.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by left of center

If Lake Michigan rises to the point that it begins breaching its historic coastline and flooding populated areas, we can always open the locks and have excess water flow down the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico in order to help regulate lake levels.

would the volume of water that's able to flow through a fully opened chicago river lock actually be enough to substantively move the needle on a body of water the size of lake huron-michigan? i don't think so.

i mean, at 45,000 sq. miles, it's by far THE largest freshwater lake on the planet in terms of surface area. to lower it by even just 1' you're talking about removing ~9.4 TRILLION gallons of water!!!

and the chicago river lock is like 80' wide and 20' deep, so 1,600 sq. feet. you'd need a flow rate of about 300,000 gallons/second (for an entire year mind you) through those 1,600 sq. feet to lower the lake by 1 foot, which seems impossible to me.

to put that into perspective, the flow rate of niagara falls is usually around 600,000 gallons/second, give or take for seasonal adjustments. and that's freaking niagara falls, an utterly gigantic waterfall, one of the largest on the planet.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Guys in what way did I suggest global warming was a farce?

My issue with the article is the absurd suggestions that downtown was innudnated (literally the riverwalk flooded which it is designed to do) and that waves were flying into the third story of buildings. It's utter, hilarious, nonsense driven by coastal losers desperately trying to project their issues onto Chicago.

Chicago will face issues from global warming, we already have. But the lake isn't going to flood downtown. We will simply dump it out the river if it ever becomes a major issue. It might take more improvements, etc, but Chicago sits on a Continental divide. As much as we have issues with flash flooding, we also have a lot of places to send water to. If we merely left the locks open the lake would drop four to six feet. We could artificially keep the lake level low and are, in fact, heavily regulated into only allowing so much flow out the canal.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

would the volume of water that's able to flow through a fully opened chicago river lock actually be enough to substantively move the needle on a body of water the size of lake huron-michigan? i don't think so.

i mean, at 45,000 sq. miles, it's by far THE largest freshwater lake on the planet in terms of surface area. to lower it by even just 1' you're talking about removing ~9.4 TRILLION gallons of water!!!

and the chicago river lock is like 80' wide and 20' deep, so 1,600 sq. feet. you'd need a flow rate of about 300,000 gallons/second (for an entire year mind you) through those 1,600 sq. feet to lower the lake by 1 foot, which seems impossible to me.

to put that into perspective, the flow rate of niagara falls is usually around 600,000 gallons/second, give or take for seasonal adjustments. and that's freaking niagara falls, an utterly gigantic waterfall, one of the largest on the planet.

The lock on the calumet is much bigger no?

[twister244]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

no, that's not quite how it goes.

lake superior discharges down the st. mary's river into lake huron-michigan.

lake huron-michigan discharges down the st. clair river into lake st. clair (with a small amount now diverted down the illinois river to the mississippi due to the reversal of the chicago river a century ago)

lake st. clair discharges down the detroit river into lake erie.

lake erie discharges down the niagara river (and over the falls) into lake ontario.

lake ontario discharges down the st. lawrence river into the gulf of st. lawrence and out into the north atlantic ocean.


hudson bay is not part of the system.


Of course, the vast majority of the water that leaves the great lakes system does so via surface evaporation.

Yes, that's what I meant to say - St. Lawrence - I had a brain fart.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

The lock on the calumet is much bigger no?

oh yeah, forgot about that. the o'brien lock also has a dam with control gates too, so i suppose if you opened all of them up and just let just let things flow, you could move a decent amount of water through there and then down the cal-sag.

still though, if the new pattern in the region is LOTS more rain water coming into the system, enough to raise the lake level many feet above long-term historical highs, opening locks and dam gates may not move enough water out. i guess we'll just have to pray for warmer winters and more evaporation to balance things out.

[moorhosj1]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

still though, if the new pattern in the region is LOTS more rain water coming into the system, enough to raise the lake level many feet above long-term historical highs, opening locks and dam gates may not move enough water out. i guess we'll just have to pray for warmer winters and more evaporation to balance things out.

I think the issue is that it isn't just in one direction. A few years ago, the Lake hit a record low water level only now to hit record highs. It's this back-and-forth between extremes that makes planning hard.

[Klippenstein]

Plus the Mississippi has been flooding in recent years... not a great option to just pass the buck.

[BrinChi]

Without a doubt it's astounding that the Lake could go from record low in 2013 to record high in 2020. Still, it's not like it's moving feet in the duration of a single rain event. The flow valves mentioned should provide options before the Lake could ever truly encroach on the city.

I remember hearing years ago when the Lake was low that there were studies to reverse the flow of the river back into the Lake and cleanup and return more sewage and storm water. I have to think the future involves flexible infrastructure to add cleaned-up wastewater when it's low and divert it away when it's high. For example, when it's especially high we could pipe water to other parts of the country who need it (a dangerous proposal for sure that would require strict guidelines and protections).

Diana must have copied the (also fear-mongering) NYT article from a couple months back that presented Chicago as more susceptible to climate change than most ocean coastal cities because of the speed in which the water levels change. There's some truth there, but, as others have said, there's no comparison to the scale of ocean water. If the ocean takes a piece of land, it's pretty much gone.

[sentinel]

Originally Posted by BrinChi

Without a doubt it's astounding that the Lake could go from record low in 2013 to record high in 2020. Still, it's not like it's moving feet in the duration of a single rain event. The flow valves mentioned should provide options before the Lake could ever truly encroach on the city..

Diana must have copied the (also fear-mongering) NYT article from a couple months back that presented Chicago as more susceptible to climate change than most ocean coastal cities because of the speed in which the water levels change. There's some truth there, but, as others have said, there's no comparison to the scale of ocean water. If the ocean takes a piece of land, it's pretty much gone.

IIRC, I believe the record actually came much more quickly after that, in the summer of 2014 and into 2015, after the record winter snowfall of over 84" from Jan-April 2014. The lake levels will probably continue to fluctuate more regularly as climate change continues to...change the planet.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Klippenstein

Plus the Mississippi has been flooding in recent years... not a great option to just pass the buck.

Tell that to the last 150 years of Chicago infrastructure builders lol.

The future for Chicago is as clear as it's past. We will build out way out of it.

[Klippenstein]

Well, maybe this is a big enough threat to finally motivate the city to fill in the "last 4 miles" of lakefront with green space so there's a buffer to protect the buildings from water damage.

[left of center]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

would the volume of water that's able to flow through a fully opened chicago river lock actually be enough to substantively move the needle on a body of water the size of lake huron-michigan? i don't think so.

i mean, at 45,000 sq. miles, it's by far THE largest freshwater lake on the planet in terms of surface area. to lower it by even just 1' you're talking about removing ~9.4 TRILLION gallons of water!!!

and the chicago river lock is like 80' wide and 20' deep, so 1,600 sq. feet. you'd need a flow rate of about 300,000 gallons/second (for an entire year mind you) through those 1,600 sq. feet to lower the lake by 1 foot, which seems impossible to me.

to put that into perspective, the flow rate of niagara falls is usually around 600,000 gallons/second, give or take for seasonal adjustments. and that's freaking niagara falls, an utterly gigantic waterfall, one of the largest on the planet.

If not the Chicago river alone, then re-diverting the flow of the Nipigon River up in Canada, which used to drain out into Hudson Bay, but was diverted into Lake Nipigon (which flows into Lake Superior). The flowrate of the Nipigon River into the Great Lakes system is twice the flowrate of the Chicago river out of the system.

Here's an interesting article on the Nipigon River diversion: https://www.lakesuperior.com/the-lak...of-ebbs-flows/
The article blames the Chicago River reversal for all the low lake levels in Lake Michigan in the last half century.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Tell that to the last 150 years of Chicago infrastructure builders lol.

The future for Chicago is as clear as it's past. We will build out way out of it.

In the past, Chicago wasn’t laden with such ballooning debt and pension costs, which eat away more and more of the budget. Fiscal mismanagement and corrupt deals have created an albatross for the region. I wouldn’t be so sure that we will build our way out of this.

[twister244]

Another unknown on how to deal with this is our ability to model and simulate climate patters in the season-to-subseasonal scale....

If you can say with confidence the region will experience significantly higher than average snow/rainfall over the coming months, then you could tailor your decisions to move as much water out as possible leading up to the rise in lake levels if you have high confidence.

Same goes on the flip side. If you have high confidence of a major dry spell, you can hold water back as much as possible.

Not saying it's a solution, but another tool that should be explored for dealing with this.

[pip]

Goodness its been two weeks tomorrow since the last time I biked without a coat. On that Sunday I met a friend and his kids in a beautiful neighborhood park, Indian Boundary Park, in West Ridge. To get there I biked to Lawrence and the river and took the river bike trail to Devon then went east to the park. Very pleasant. After as usual it seems I ended up at the Brown line Rockwell station - a picture perfect neighborhood. Lincoln Square nearby is also the same, though I wish that empty area near the Brown Line station on Western could be filled in and maybe Western could get some sprucing up. Other than that in the immediate area the neighborhood is fantastic.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

...

These projections make me lol. I just got back from texas a few weeks ago.
Id love to have a texas october. Really think we are going to see 90's-80's in november lol


Also those worried about lake levels too high, im more worried about them being to low. If they are going to rise we could re dredge the St Clair river again, but have a plan to fill it back in again if Michigan Huron loses too much. We could also open the locks on the Chicago river to lake Michigan to lower the combined lakes too.

This was not even 10 years ago, less and the lakes were at their low's




required reading below.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/archi...se/1366453001/


..

[bnk]

Originally Posted by left of center

Yeah, that article is mostly sensationalized nonsense. While the city will definitely have to deal with not only more rainfall overall, but more sudden rainfall that has a month's worth of rain fall in a matter of a few hours, the lake is NOT the ocean (as many of the previous posts have pointed out as well). If Lake Michigan rises to the point that it begins breaching its historic coastline and flooding populated areas, we can always open the locks and have excess water flow down the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico in order to help regulate lake levels. There are some complexities with doing this, as legally the city can only divert a certain amount of water annually, but that's something that we can fix with legislation. A rising Atlantic Ocean is not going to respond to political will.

Chicago will have problems due to climate change, but those problems will pale in comparison to what cities like Miami, New York, New Orleans, etc. will have to face.

yep, and the cal sag locks

That and creating an adjustable channel like i said on the st. Clair river that can be raised if needed. They looked into this before. Its in my link above.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pip

After as usual it seems I ended up at the Brown line Rockwell station - a picture perfect neighborhood.

that's home sweet home for me!

we live a block away from the rockwell brown line stop.

i freaking love this super family-friendly little pocket of the city that we wound up in.