City officials are dumping billions of gallons of sewage into the Chicago River

Chicago residents have grown used to enduring putrid smells wafting up from Bubbly Creek after heavy rain, emanating from the condoms, tampons and feces stuck in trees along the shore. The source of the pollution? The Racine Avenue sewage pumping station. The station pumps both wastewater and stormwater to a treatment facility, where it is sanitized and sent to the Gulf of Mexico. But, if heavy rain creates an overwhelming amount of stormwater, the station dumps raw sewage directly into the Chicago River to prevent homes from flooding.

“And all of this is happening despite the billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money that has been spent over 50 years on the Deep Tunnel project, the sprawling system of more than 100 miles of underground tunnels and massive reservoirs designed to capture floodwater in the Chicago area and help protect the river and Lake Michigan from pollution,” Brett Chase writes for the Chicago Sun Times.

This year, Racine station, which the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago operates, has dumped over 10 billion gallons of sewage into the Chicago River, which then ends up in Buddy Creek. A similar situation is happening at the North Branch pumping station, which the city also oversees. That station has dumped 2 billion gallons of sewage into the north branch of the Chicago River this year.