Flood claims up as Deep Tunnel work drags on

When heavy rains hit Chicago, the overflow of sewage and storm water would be kept from backing up into Cook County basements and being dumped into waterways such as the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

That was the idea when work began on the massive, $3.8 billion Deep Tunnel project, a network of four giant pipelines to dump sewage and storm overflow into three reservoirs during heavy storms.

Forty years later, the river isn’t nearly as dirty as it was. And billions of gallons of sewage have been kept from fouling the basements of countless homes and businesses.

But problems remain…Please click here to read Tim Novak’s story in the Sun-Times.