For the first ten or more years of the more than fifteen years we’ve lived in this neighborhood of Chicago we never flooded and rarely even saw much runoff in the gutters when it rained. Even in the floods of 1987 when the city of Des Plaines was literally an island we had no real standing water here.
Then THEY came. The City of Chicago in its neverending quest to improve our lives installed what are called Stormblocker drains—or swirlies as I prefer to call them. The stated purpose of these new, improved drains was to slow the draining of rainwater from the streets into the sewage system as a method of flood control. The idea was to reduce sewers backing up into our basements—not that they ever had. Our streets were torn up for weeks while they installed them.
Now every time it rains the water accumulates in our streets, overflows our gutters, and inches up the lawn, over the sidewalk towards the house. I’ve often seen several feet of water in a street flooded curb to curb. You could paddle a canoe down it. And the water persists sometimes for as much as eight hours.
So welcome to Lake Sauganash! Maybe they’ll stock us with fish.
