TH

CHICAGO SANITARY DISTRICT.

HE Sanitary District of Chicago is the child of the General Assembly of Illinois. It exists by State statute and operates under the legis lature's creative act as a separate and distinct municipal corporation for taxing and administrative purposes.

The Sanitary District is much greater in area than the city of Chicago and is somewhat less in area than the county of Cook. Its boundaries extend from the Cook-Lake County line on the north to the Indiana State line on the south. On the west it overlaps the Chicago city limits and includes nearly all of the suburbs adjacent to the city. The district owns a strip of land on each side of the main channel between Chicago and Joliet over which it exerts police and other powers for the purpose of protecting the canal and the Lockport Controlling Works. The district also owns the land bordering on the Calumet Sag Channel and the North Shore Channel. The present area of the Sanitary District, (April, 1925) is 437.39 square miles and its population is approximately 3,500,000.

The Sanitary District is responsible legally for the final disposition of the sewage not only of the entire city of Chicago, but also for that of 49 other municipal corporations, including such important suburbs as Evanston, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka and Glencoe on the North Shore; Blue Island, Harvey and Calumet City on the south; Oak Park, Cicero, Berwyn, Forest Park, LaGrange and Western Springs to the southwest; and Niles, Morton Grove, Glenview, Park Ridge and Des Plaines on the northwest.

Much of this territory has been added to the Sanitary District of Chicago by separate and distinct acts of the General Assembly-the only source of authority for such annexations-since the foundation of the district by the act of May 29, 1889. This original act established boundaries that contemplated sewage disposal simply for that part of the city of Chicago between Devon Avenue on the north, Eighty-seventh Street on the south, and Western Avenue on the west. The original act of nearly forty years ago did not attempt to cover the successive and formidable increments of mass raw sewage within the Stock Yards industries, which have developed Chicago as the live stock capital of the world. The packing industry in Chicago now produces raw sewage and commercial wastes daily equivalent in volume to the human sewage of more than one million persons.

GUARDS HEALTH OF 3,500,000.

The problem that the legislature of Illinois placed before its infant of 1889 has grown from that of disposing of sewage of approximately 1,000,000 human beings to that of preserving the health and water supply of upwards of 3,500,000 men, woman and children with the additional factor of having to deal with the trade wastes of the stock yards and other great Chicago industries. The Corn Products plant at Argo alone produced a daily average of sewage equivalent to the human sewage of 380,000 in 1923.

The thought of connecting Lake Michigan with the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and through them with the Gulf of Mexico dates back to the French explorers. Louis Joliet and Pere Marquette, as early as 1673. The first canal act was passed by the Congress of the United States in 1822. The State of Illinois in 1836 passed legislation authorizing the construction of the canal as requested by the United States. The original Illi

nois and Michigan Canal took twelve years to build and was completed in 1848 by the State of Illinois at a cost of $6,557,681.50. It was six feet deep and forty feet wide. The first sewer system built by the city of Chicago in 1856 and also sewers constructed thereafter, drained into the Chicago river, the only available outlet, and the Chicago River was then flowing naturally into Lake Michigan, the only source of Chicago's water supply. Chicago's population grew rapidly and in a short time the water pumped from the Chicago River into the Illinois and Michigan Canal, both for sewage and navigation purposes was not sufficient to keep the river from flowing into Lake Michigan and to protect the city's water supply. The city of Chicago thereupon expended $3,500,000, with the consent of the State of Illinois, in rebuilding the canal according to the original deep cut plan of the '30's and in 1871 the enlarged canal was opened and produced a flowage capacity of 40,000 cubic feet per minute. This gave only temporary relief and in 1881, at a cost of $251,177 pumps were installed at the entrance to the canal which produced a flow of 60,000 cubic feet per minute.

Chicago continued to grow with tremendous strides and the sanitation situation had become so dangerous that in 1885 the city of Chicago created the Drainage and Water Supply Commission. This commission made a report in which it considered every known method of sewage disposal and also gave heed to the great demand for a waterway to the Gulf of Mexico and recommended as a complete solution for Chicago's difficulties the following:

First: That a sanitary and ship canal be constructed connecting Lake Michigan at Chicago with the Des Plaines River at Lockport of sufficient size and capacity to permit a flow of 24,000 cubic feet per minute of water for each 100,000 of population based on a total of two and one-half million people, and

Second: That this canal be constructed of such depth and so connected with the Chicago River as to permanently reverse it and send its flow through the Des Plaines and Illinois into the Mississippi River.

PROVISION FOR DISTRICT.

The Illinois Legislature in 1887 appointed a joint committee which acted with the officials of the city of Chicago and this joint committee in 1889 reported its conclusions in the draft of a bill and in that year there was passed the legislation under which the Sanitary District of Chicago was organized by a vote of the people at an election in 1889 and the first Board of Trustees was chosen at a special election held in December, 1889.

The Sanitary District was given the power under the law to construct and maintain a common outlet for the drainage and sewage of its territory; to make, lease, manage and control docks adjacent to any navigable channel built by it and to control and dispose of any water power incidentally created in the building and use of said channels and was expressly

1. Lock and dams at Lockport, Ill. 2. Main channel view at Romeo, Ill. 3. Calumet-Sag Channel. 4. North side sewage treatment works in progress of construction.

prohibited from controlling water beyond its own channel. For these purposes it was given power to levy taxes, issue bonds, obtain property by eminent domain and exercise general powers normally incident to municipal corporations.

The route of the canal was chosen in 1892 and the canal was actually under construction in 1893. The route included the Chicago River and its south branch and an artificial canal twenty-eight miles long from Robey Street to Lockport, fifteen miles of the latter being through rock.

On January 17, 1900, the main channel was completed and placed in operation. It was 160 feet wide in the rock section and 24 feet deep with a flowage capacity of 10,000 cubic feet per second. The cost of construction was $29,691,239. Between 1902 and 1912, the Sanitary District practically completed the widening and deepening of the Chicago River throughout its length with a width of 200 feet and a depth of 26 feet at a total cost of $12,903,619.

EXTENDED TO CALUMET REGION.

In May, 1903, the Illinois Legislature extended the corporate limits of the Sanitary District southward to include the Calumet region and northward to include the North Shore District. The cost of building intercepting and auxiliary sewers so that the sewage could be pumped back from the original sewer system of the city and into the Chicago River has been $11,611,162. Between 1903 and 1907 by act of the legislature of 1903, the main channel was extended a distance of four miles from Lockport to Joliet and a power house was constructed at a total cost of $4,562,716.

In 1907-8 the North Shore Channel was constructed 8 miles long, 80 feet wide, 13 feet deep and it furnishes an outlet for drainage and sewage for the city of Evanston and other North Shore communities. The cost was $4,106,489.

In 1911-22, the Calumet-Sag Channel was constructed connecting the Calumet River with the main channel at the village of Sag. This channel is 16 miles long, 60 feet wide, 20 feet deep and cost $14,035,529. It provides for the disposal of the sewage of the great manufacturing area south of Eighty-seventh Street.

The Sanitary District became involved in litigation with the Federal Government in 1908 and suit for injunction to restrain the district from withdrawing more than 4,167 cubic feet per second of water from Lake Michigan was started in the United States courts. This suit was brought on by the declination of the War Department to grant permission for the use of Lake Michigan water in quantities necessary to care properly for disposal of the sewage of the rapidly increasing population of Chicago.

TEMPORARY PERMIT GRANTED.

In 1923, a formal decree was entered finding against the Sanitary District and in favor of the Federal Government. An appeal was taken to the United States Supreme Court and on January 5, 1925, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the lower court, but stated "the decree for an injunction as prayed is affirmed, to go into effect in sixty days without prejudice to any permit that may be issued by the Secretary of War according to law." Secretary of War Weeks on March 6, 1925 issued a permit for the withdrawal of 8,500 cubic feet per second by the Sanitary District conditional upon the undertaking by the Sanitary District of a construction program of artificial treatment works covering a period of 20 years at an aggregate cost of $121,000,000. The work of the first five year period is now under way at an estimated cost of approximately $59,576,000. This includes the completion of the north side treatment plant, which will be the largest sewage treatment plant in the world and enlargement of the Calumet and Des Plaines plants. It also includes the initial payment of $1,000,000 for the building of regulating works at the outlets of the Great Lakes for the purpose of compensating for the reduction of levels caused by the withdrawal at Chicago. Also the Sanitary District's part of the cost of construction of the Stock Yards and Argo plants; the en