Urban flooding a Great Lakes regional dilemma

James Dau in Great Lakes Echo: More people in Great Lakes cities are falling victim to urban flooding, some as often as 30 to 40 times in their lifetimes, according to a Chicago-based sustainability nonprofit organization. “We did a brief survey of people in the Chicago region, and we heard some actually devastating stories about flooding from some of them,” said Harriet Festing, director of the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s water program. “We came away from it pretty shocked.”

The September report defines urban flooding as when buildings, streets or open property are inundated by rain, sewage or overflowing bodies of water. Festing characterized the problem in Chicago as not catastrophic, but frequent.

It’s also hidden. Property owners often don’t want to talk about it, she said. “They’re somewhat ashamed of it, having sewage in their living space. They’re afraid of what it might do to their property values.

Chicago flood victims are not alone. The survey led the center to investigate urban flooding across the Great Lakes region. “We wanted to find out if it was more widespread than just Chicago, to see if other cities were suffering the same problem,” Festing said.

Thirty of 48 cities surveyed responded. They represent approximately 19.7 million people, almost 23 percent of the region’s population.

Every city reported flooding, with 80 percent characterizing those issues as medium or large. While most municipalities track flooding, only about half have a plan for dealing with it. Only 20 percent could estimate the cost of flooding damage....

Stillman Creek Flood in Marion, Illinois, in August 2007, shot by Ben Jacobson (Kranar Drogin) stitched by Marku1988, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

To drought-proof city’s water supply, Sydney proposes a second set of pipes

Brett Walton in Circle of Blue:  The City of Sydney, one of 38 political subdivisions in Australia’s largest metropolitan region of the same name, is in the final stage of preparing an ambitious master plan that seeks to refashion its water infrastructure to meet the constraints of a water-scarce future.

One of the oldest sections of Australia’s 224-year-old hub, the City – which includes the central business district and is home to 185,000 of the 4.6 million people in greater Sydney – envisions a second water-distribution network that would provide water for purposes other than drinking. This parallel system would tap into new sources like salty water, purified by waste heat from power plants, as well as existing sources, such as recycled wastewater and rainwater, which are typically flushed out to sea.

“For a major urban centre to have two networks — one delivering potable water and another delivering non-potable water — it would be ground breaking in Australia,” Monique Retamal wrote in an email to Circle of Blue. Retamal, a researcher at the Sydney-based Institute for Sustainable Futures, helped to develop the City’s water plan. “As far as I am aware, there are no other similar plans elsewhere in the world.”

The city council not only wants to adapt its obsolete infrastructure to a changing climate, said Bhakti Devi, the city’s manager for water strategy. Because cities worldwide will soon be confronting the same problems, the City also wants to be a pioneer for urban water solutions globally....

Sydney and Sydney Harbour Bridge taken from North Shore, 19 March 1932. Shot by E.W. Searle