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[OurTown]

Not really sure how that article changes anything Storm water in Chicagoland all goes thru the Metro Water Reclamation District Treatment Plants along with the Black Water for treatment. So driveway car wash water goes thru the plant as well. Same place as the wastewater from commercial Car Washes, Laundromats etc.

What is interesting is the toxicity of Chlorine is mentioned yet the EPA dictated that the MWRD use Chlorine to further treat wastewater before discharged from the plant.

Do they combine storm and sanitary sewer at the plants or treat them separately? I'm pretty sure around here all storm water goes directly into streams.

 

[Earl Weiss]

Do they combine storm and sanitary sewer at the plants or treat them separately? I'm pretty sure around here all storm water goes directly into streams.

It is all carried to the plant by a single set of pipes. Back in the day I expect there was a huge infrastructure cost savings to only having one set of pipes. Later it became problematic as land was developed an the system had to handle ever increasing storm runoff. This lead to the "Deep Tunnel Project" consisting of 100 miles of Tunnels 8-33 feet in diameter and reservoirs to hold excess water during storms to be processed later. . Still in some huge storm events gates are opened allowing untreated water to enter lake Michigan resulting in swimming bans. Supposedly completion of the Tunnel / reservoir system will mostly eliminate this.