DuPage Flooding Complaints Rise But No Money For Fix

A plan to coordinate flood control along the DuPage River is mired in the backwaters of politics and finance, Plainfield Township Supervisor John Argoudelis said.

As one of the wettest summers on record winds down, flooding complaints are dominating township meetings and e-mail, Argoudelis said.

"This is the Number One issue of concern to Plainfield Township residents," he said.

But an initiative launched by Argoudelis and U.S Rep Judy Biggert (R-Hinsdale) last summer to organize a storm water study has yet to draw the first $200,000 needed to get the project off the ground. In total, costs for the comprehensive study will run into the millions, Argoudelis said.

Neighborhoods near Renwick Road had to organize sandbagging efforts when the DuPage overflowed its banks after persistent rains last month, he said. Rising groundwater levels and regular floods are raising distress levels among homeowners frustrated by water-damaged homes, flooded basements and dampened economic development.

"It was close to as bad as September of 2008," Argoudelis said of this summer's floods. "It wasn't individual rain events of 12 to 14 inches like we had in July of 1996. It was a series of repeated (storms that produced) two or three inches of rain."

Troubled waters

Other than rebuilding culverts and re-digging ditches, there isn't much township officials can do right now to tame the DuPage. Officials for the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates river control, insist a comprehensive study of the entire length of the DuPage needs be completed before communities can build berms or make any other major changes to the flow of the river, Argoudelis said.

"We can't just berm a little piece by your house and not worry about how it's going to affect things miles down river," he said.

Older homes built in the 1950s and 1960s have worse water problems because newer neighborhoods are built on ground that is artificially raised higher, he said.

In the subdivisions on the outskirts of Plainfield, control measures for wayward waters are pitting neighbor against neighbor. Last summer, homeowners in the Weller Subdivision filed suit against developers of the Lakelands subdivision after Lakelands filled in an area to prevent DuPage waters from surging into their lake. An injunction blocking the move was approved based on claims that the rerouted water ran downstream into the Weller neighborhood, attorney Carl Buck said.

Frank Bender, who has lived in the Rill Ridge subdivision for 52 years, is party to the lawsuit. Over the last three years, he said, he's lost about eight feet of his yard to the river. Flood water downed a huge tree on his lawn this year, but it didn't make it all the way to his house, he said.

"We keep asking the authorities for information about what is going on, but we don't get any answers," he said.

Why so wet?

Rampant growth during historically dry decades may be the root of the township's flooding problems, Argoudelis said.

Think about what happens when you pour a five-gallon bucket of water in a farm field, he said. The liquid is filtered through the plant roots and soil and never finds its way to the river. But when that same water is poured down the sink drain, it flows through the sewers and culverts straight to the river, he said.

"It's a lot different than when we were predominantly a farming community in that a lot more of the water runoff gets to the river," Argoudelis said. "There's no question that growth has made this happen."

And that growth happened during the mid-1990s to about 2007 — a period when the area's water table was unusually low, he said.

"During all that growth, we were going through a dry period," he said. "If the water table were where it is today, it might have dictated we build a foot or so higher."

Some speculate the boat ramp built at 135th Street in the late 1990s is adding to the water problems, but the Corps of Engineers "blessed the engineering plans," Argoudelis said.

Beached

Meanwhile, funding for the study that might be the first step to fixing the flooding is buried in a bill that is unlikely to pass in the upcoming election season, Argoudelis said.

"There's not going to be much political appetite for passing big spending bills this fall," he said.

Proponents are hoping they may be able to add language to an existing bill funding a similar Des Plaines River study so that the DuPage study can be done as well, Biggert said in a recent press release.

"As good stewards of the environment, our goal is to protect this national treasure, as well as property values, homes, basements and economic opportunities of area residents who live near its shores," Biggert said.