Politics
Officials Should Warn Chicagoans About Potential Threat to Drinking Water Supply, Watchdog Says
(WTTW News)
Officials in charge of Chicago’s water system should warn residents that more than 1,200 water mains were buried under the city’s streets in spots too close to sewers and could pose a threat to the city’s drinking water in the event the system stops working as designed, according to an audit released Wednesday by the city’s watchdog.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s audit focuses on the 2019 acknowledgement by leaders of Chicago’s Department of Water Management that extensive water main and sewer line construction work failed to comply with Illinois Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
In 1,204 locations, there is not enough horizontal or vertical distance between underground water mains and sewer lines, according to the audit. In 39 spots, the “water main or service line in fact crossed through sewer infrastructure,” Witzburg wrote.
Randy Conner, the commissioner of the Department of Water Management, should provide “accessible, proactive public education” on what city residents should do if a nearby water main is compromised and their water is no longer safe to drink, Witzburg recommended.
But water officials declined to follow that recommendation, telling the inspector general because “residents do not need to take any action, such elevated public communications may dilute the desired impact of city communications when there is a confirmed risk and actions by residents is actually needed, for example during boil orders.”
That is not sufficient, Witzburg said in a statement.
“Reliably providing safe drinking water is one of the most basic and important government functions,” Witzburg said. “Providing clear and readily available information in which people have reason to be confident is another. Transparent government does not ‘dilute’ government communications, it gives people a reason to believe what they’re told. Chicagoans are entitled to know where their water mains and sewers are too close together, what the city is doing about it and how much it will cost, how long and how often their streets will be torn up, and what they should do to keep their families safe if something goes wrong.”
The botched work “does not necessarily present an acute safety risk, because the pressurization of city water mains mitigates the risk of water supply contamination,” water officials told Witzburg.
However, “parts of the city’s network of water mains have lost full pressurization multiple times in recent years,” according to Witzburg’s audit.
City officials should “provide accessible, proactive public education on how city residents should respond in the event of a water main depressurization, especially because it takes time for (the Department of Water Management) to communicate to city residents about the need to boil water in the event of a water main depressurization,” Witzburg wrote.
The city’s water supply is safe, with officials continuously monitoring the quality of water both as it leaves the water purification plants and as it travels through the distribution system, officials told Witzburg.
Officials work to maintain “water pressure levels that meet or exceed regulatory standards, by proactively monitoring for leaks in the system, by inspecting one-third of the water system each year, and by using leak data to prioritize spending on water main replacements,” water officials told Witzburg.
City officials developed a plan to relocate the water mains to meet state standards in consultation with state environmental officials and demanded that the contractors that performed the botched work fix it at their expense, triggering two lawsuits.
The city had paid a firm more than $288 million between 2013 and 2023 for work that was designed to ensure that contractors correctly installed water mains.
“Even after discovery of widespread separation standards noncompliance in 2019, the city continued to pay that same company millions of dollars annually for its services,” Witzburg wrote.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone| (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
