page_title: Chicago area water quality
section_title: Master Drainage Plan
hierarchical_section_title: Chicago area water quality / Master Drainage Plan
caption_attribution_description: English: Flow of Chicago waterways before and after construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
context_page_description: Ever since the village of Chicago, later changed to City of Chicago in 1857, was formed in 1834 for its unique geography and accessibility to one of the largest bodies of fresh water, the Great Lakes, it has had to deal with a number of issues concerning water quality to deal with the changes in its ever growing magnitude. To combat the increasing issue of water quality the city of Chicago implemented ideas and plans such as the Master Drainage Plan and Tunnel and Reservoir Plan. These were both historic steps in a positive and green direction. But, it wasn't until 2015 that Chicago began to treat sewage and storm water runoff, thus finally shedding its title as the last major city not to treat its sewage before being discharged into its waterways.
context_section_description: According to Macaitis (1985), the initial main concern around water quality stemmed from the constant drainage of sewage into the Chicago River and then ultimately into Lake Michigan due to the village lacking a sophisticated form of drainage, instead relying almost solely on roadside ditches. Burrill (1904) goes more in depth stating that, Chicago inhabitants eventually took precautions to gather and utilize water from Lake Michigan by means of water intake valves that open up and ingest water from 4 miles way in 1840, however the contaminants were still able to reach the water supply. To deal with the issue of a potentially contaminated city water supply, the State of Illinois created a drainage commission for the Chicago area in 1852. The commission created the master drainage plan in 1856.The master drainage plan was centered around the fundamental aspect of raising the city by 3m and constructing new sewers that drained into the river and not the lake  However once indoor plumbing was introduced to the world, the original sewer design, which was only designed to drain storm water runoff, took on a dual responsibility. It not only handled storm water, its original function, but also the sewage created from indoor plumbing. A combined sewage system  can cause serious water pollution due to the fact that when wet weather occurs and runoff exceeds the maximum flow rate of the system, the excess runoff that the system can’t handle is discharged directly into a nearby body of water, whether it be a lake or a river.
  According to Rauch (1885) and Burrill (1904), In early as four years after the implementation of the master drainage plan, the sewage commissioners called for the deepening and overall enlargement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, going as far as to declare it as a, “measure indispensable to the protection and health of the city”. The Canal had originally been created in 1848 with the purely commercial reasoning to function as a lock and pumping works for boats when the water was too low. Due to the ever expanding population and industrialization of Chicago, sewage and waste from domestic residents, slaughter-houses, and other sources continued to increase in volume and pour into the river.
  In 1863 an epidemic of Erysipelas broke out among the river, a direct consequence of the filth and pollution of the water. The epidemic of Erysipelas coupled with the outcry and call for a better canal by the sewage commissioners resulted in the modification of the Illinois and Michigan canal in 1865. The modification of the system changed the function of the canal so as to be able to utilize the pumps in an effort to cleanse the river. According to Macaitis, it specifically took water pumped in from the Chicago River and discharged it back onto a high point in the canal to ease and reduce the water pollution of Lake Michigan, our main supply of water.
  However, the canal was an inadequate solution to combat the growing problems to come. In 1885 an epidemic of waterborne disease arose and flourished due to the coupling of the ever increasing volume of waste as well as the sedimentation that occurred in the Illinois and Michigan canal in 1879, which reduced the original slow current to an even more reduced flow capacity. To directly combat the continuously increased volumes of polluted and reduce the amount of contaminated water the city of Chicago created the Chicago Sanitary District, which was constructed with the purpose of creating and maintaining a canal system that reverses the flow of the Chicago River and the Calumet River systems. 
  In 1900 the main channel of the plan was finished and provided relief in the form of a new process for sewage and run-off. Switching the flow of the water in the river allowed the discharged sewage of the city population to flow in the opposite direction. Instead of allowing the Chicago River to directly drain the city’s sewage into Lake Michigan, the reversal of the channel allows for Lake Michigan to flow into the Chicago River. This was done so as to eliminate the contamination of the
caption: Switching the Chicago River's water flow
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