A Parade of Dirt and Pipe

There is a lot of dirt and a lot of pipe staged on Marshall Drive near Wille (south of Oakton). So we can now see physical evidence that work has begun on the Storm Sewer improvements in our neighborhood.

Folks are very anxious for these improvements; and with the rain and subsequent flood damage this past July 24th,  there is a renewed sense of urgency.
Perhaps a meeting of 8th Ward residents may be a method for the city to hear from the community much like what is being done on Wednesday, August 18, 6:00 PM for the 
storm sewer improvements on Nelson Lane.


A note to community members reading this blog: Please post comments to this post about the flood damage you experienced this past July 24th and your thoughts about the value of a neighborhood meeting.

Storm Sewer Work on Marshall

See the Des Plaines construction blog. Looks like launch date is tomorrow Aug 12, 2010. Should we have a parade?

Best Laid Plans

As plans were developed for the storm sewer improvements in the Des Plaines community, the work on Marshall Dr. was scheduled for a June 2 2010 start. However, who would have predicted a strike by road construction laborers to hold up not only storm sewer projects, but also others -- including the casino.

Rains, please stay away. And we will need to utilize the race track and river boats to "invest" our money.

June 2010 News

The word from the City of Des Plaines Engineering Dept on a notice letter dated May 24th is that the project will begin on Tuesday, June 2, 2010 with an estimated completion date of Friday, September 3,2010. However, folks on Marshall Dr. will not see any activity until mid-July 2010 as construction will begin on the south end at Wille and Marshall.
The City Contractor is John Neri Construction.

See the City's construction blog post for further details.

Also see the Google Maps tags for this and related project location details
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://www.desplaines.org/KML/CIP2010ContractA.kml.

City To Expand Sewers (from JOURNALOnline)

Its official! Bids awarded and work to commence. Mayor says all completed by October. Engineering says work should be starting by June's end.
Read more at
http://www.journal-topics.com/dp/10/dp100421.4.html

The details of storm sewer work on Marshall

The following is a recap of an email from Becka Shipp (City of Des Plaines Public Works and Engineering Department):

The Marshall Drive work is anticipated to begin July 2010 with a contractor to be selected after the May 5 bid opening.
The project consists of installing a parallel storm sewer system for flood relief. The work will begin at Wille near the Higgins Creek (the intended destination of the flood water) and proceed to the north. Various existing catch basins will be replaced,  as well as a sanitary sewer (northwest corner of Marshall and Courtesy) and a few water main repairs. As the work moves north across Oakton into the neighborhood, the storm sewer will be installed in the pavement on the west side of Marshall Drive from Oakton to Cordial.
The storm sewer installation process is a moving operation where the contractor excavates, installs the pipe, then back-fills in one continuous sequence at the rate of  100-200 feet of pipe per day, depending on underground utility conflicts.
Events in your neighborhood such as garage sales, deliveries, property construction, appointments, etc, may be impacted with this storm sewer work. Contact Des Plaines Public Works and Engineering Department (847) 391-5388 to be sure your event does not conflict with the storm sewer work.

Des Plaines also maintains a blog at http://desplainescipupdates.wordpress.com/ where information about this and other construction projects will be posted as available.

Spring has sprung and work will be done on Marshall Drive

According to Becka Shipp (City of Des Plaines Public Works and Engineering Department) the storm sewer work on Marshall Drive will begin sometime in July. The kickoff is the bid opening scheduled for May 5. It seems that the Marshall Project will be combined with another main area of work (near Lake Opeka) which will begin in late May. The Marshall portion is scheduled to begin in July with all completion by Sept 2010. Watch for letters about parking, street closures, and other news about the work.

Des Plaines also maintains a blog at http://desplainescipupdates.wordpress.com/ where info will be posted as available. 

$10.3 Million money for 2008 Flood Victims

Upon listening to a channel 17 (Comcast Des Plaines) rebroadcast of the 4/5/2010 Council Meeting, there was an announcement of the availability of $10.3 million for the relief of 2008 flood victims. There will be a meeting on Monday May 3rd at the Des Plaines Library starting at 6:00 pm that will help folks make an application to file for reimbursement of damages to property.

Also see Flyer
or point your browser to
http://www.cookcountydisastergrant.org/

Storm Water Master Plan Problem Areas 8&9 status

Seems that there is some news in the form of a Resident Street Notification Letter dated 2/23/2010 about the Marshall part of this project - Summer 2010. However, I am wondering about the Pennsylvania piece of the project?

A response from Mr Duddles has shed some light on the matter:

"Pennsylvania will not have any direct work being done on it for this project. It will benefit though when the new sewer is installed on Marshall by way of that area now not draining to Pennsylvania and to the detention pond. The detention pond that is fed by the drainage from the entire area will now only receive the drainage from east of Marshall. The area west and north of Marshall will now drain directly to Higgins creek thus cutting the drainage area in half in order to provide better relief."

Look for some activity on Marshall this summer.

Stormwater Master Plan reviewed

by Austin Stanton

I have read the Stormwater Master Plan published by Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd dated July 2003 for the City of Des Plaines, IL.

To place our beliefs before the detail below, we believe that the City should strongly consider  revisiting the design standards for the proposed options since the comments below show that the proposed solution may fall short of the necessary requirements and expectations for our area. The City should take into account the results of the questionnaire/survey results that we produced last summer. The proposed solutions were based on virtually no input from our area.

The entire document is 140 pages, and currently is not publicly available in its entirety, so you can look here for the portions of the report relevant to the comments below where important key passages have been noted.

My comments about this report are as follows:

1. It is unclear when The City sent out the Flood Protection Questionnaire. The report implies that it was sent out after the 2001 flood event, but it may have been in 1986. Burke includes a separate table that documents phone calls received by The City during the 2001 event. It is important to note that there were very few respondents in our ward. I have no recollection of receiving the questionnaire, and I have been here since 1995.
2. The Plan is an update to the 1986 Storm Water Master Plan.
3. The proposed solutions are designed to handle the October, 2001 rain event (p 75), which was 3.8 inches of rain in 3-4 hours. This is close to last June’s event, but significantly under the September, 2008 event.
4. The report briefly addresses rear yard flooding (p. ES-3) and provides an estimate, but this issue appears to be outside the scope of this plan.
5. The priority list (p.ES-4) lists our area as the 4th highest priority. The highest priority area is in The Highwood Knolls. They have or had a significantly higher weighted score, by far, than any other area. This can probably be linked to the high level of responses to the questionnaire. Therefore, the lack of responses from our area may have hurt us.
6. On page 28, the report states that the “existing Marshall Drive storm sewer has insufficient capacity to convey tributary October, 2001 historic storm event runoff”.
7. On page 31, it states the same thing for the Pennsylvania Avenue storm sewer. These sewer systems are undersized. This is a critical piece of information.
8. Page 41 states the extent of the October, 2001 event and discusses the methods used to arrive at their recommendations.
9. Pages 73-77 provide a detailed description of how the storm systems in these 2 areas work. There are various alternatives that are discussed and evaluated; some are quite impractical, such as buying Friendship Park and turning it into a detention pond.
10. Alternative 1A solves the problem for Area 8 at the expense of Area 9. Alternative 1B is recommended to be used in conjunction with 1A. However, this is dependent on the existence of “the proposed Wille Rd. storm system”. It is not clear if that system was built. Note that Spaceco is the surveying division of Christopher Burke Engineering, so it should be assumed that the information they provided is accurate. Also, as I suspected, there are many technical difficulties with this option including easements and existing utilities. It is stated that if Alternatives 1A and 1B are done, flood protection for Area 8 is achieved during the October, 2001 event and “acceptable flood levels of 4.1 inches” occur at Pennsylvania and Oakton. This means that any event that exceeds the October, 2001 event would result in flooding exceeding 4.1 inches at Pennsylvania and Oakton.
11. Option 2, which seemed to be the most practical, won’t work due to existing elevations.

However the most disturbing aspect of this report by far, is addressed on Page ES-3. The report addresses the issue of the sanitary system surcharge. It recommends that the burden for this problem be put on the homeowner. I think that it is erroneously assumed that this problem is due to a combined sewer system, which we don’t have in our areas. Again, I believe that the proposed solution for our area will have little or no impact on the issue of the sanitary sewer surcharge. This should become a priority for us.

Going forward, we should determine if the City is going to revisit the design standards for the proposed options. Under the circumstances, the proposed solution may fall short of the necessary requirements for our area and almost certainly fall short of expectations. The City should take into account the results of the questionnaire/survey results that we produced last summer. The proposed solutions were based on virtually no input from our area.