Chicago's Lake Michigan Shoreline Is Eroding; City Gets $1.5M To Study

June 16, 2024

The bronze relief Chicago Rising From The Lake by artist Milton Horn and installed along the Chicago River at the Columbus Drive bridge. In January 2020, severe storms and high lake levels conspired to create one of the biggest threats to Chicago beaches in years and caused an estimated $37 million in damages. Even a slight air temperature increase can dramatically reduce the lake's winter ice cover. Chicago Restaurant Week by Choose Chicago, our favorite dining event of the year, returns for their 16th year! U. Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois called the new funding a "necessary first step to expand the Chicago Shoreline Project" but said he hopes future efforts will focus more closely on erosion on the city's Southside lakefront, which he said has been long left out of protection efforts. Chicago Rising from the Lake Map - Work of art - Chicago, United States. The commission for the great sculpture came just four years after Horn left his position as a professor at Olivet College in Michigan and moved to Chicago with Estelle.

  1. Chicago rising from the lake movie
  2. Chicago rising from the lake park
  3. Chicago rising from the lake city

Chicago Rising From The Lake Movie

"The female figure represents Chicago emerging reborn from the bottom of Lake Michigan following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. McHenry County's department of transportation has moved toward using salt brine, rather than rock salt, on some of its routes. Instead, it flows south into the Mississippi River and eventually lands in the Gulf of Mexico.

The process, which involves pushing water through a semipermeable membrane, typically requires 5 to 50 gallons of water to produce only 1 gallon of water. Ms. Watson, who is 66, today still lives in the same home. As levels of chlorides continue to rise in Lake Michigan and exceed state limits in Chicago-area waterways, municipalities across the region are grappling with the urgent need to reduce the use of road salt in winter. River managers have a trigger point for opening the lock gates — reversing the river's flow into Lake Michigan — in order to protect downtown Chicago from disaster. This could become the new normal going forward. Simple commercial licensing. "When you look out over the lake, you realize for the first time that you can't differentiate it from the ocean, " he said. Chicago rising from the lake movie. That's particularly true of private property owners, Kuykendall said, for whom "there is just no oversight at all. " A city hotline fielded more than 1, 500 distress calls from residents whose basements were flooded. Chicagoans paid a heavy price. 21 inches of rain fell.

"Let's make sure that we don't build something that's gonna get washed out the next time we have a 100-year storm. That was during a post-glacial period, hydrologists point out, when the lake was seeking a steady state. In the 1950s and '60s, rising and falling levels led to the more than $300 million Shoreline Protection Project. There are details – the eagle and the organic elements – that reference the great debt the city owes to its natural setting and the freedom enjoyed in a country where such miraculous growth could occur. "Unless there's a nice, wide beach for people to spread out, if you allow people to come as a large crowd on a small beach, there's probably a safety factor that's involved, " Mattheus said. That record lasted just one year: In May 2019, 8. For more than a century — through generations of blasting, tunneling, jacking and remaking of a swamp to match a city's ambitions — the lake was ready to serve as a last-resort dump for sewage. Chicago rising from the lake city. Again and again, the crew repeated these steps.

Chicago Rising From The Lake Park

And sometimes it's called "steam fog. Dr. Gronewold's work is focused on what he calls an emerging tug of war between recent increases in both evaporation and precipitation, each of which can be influenced by the warming globe. The hope is that these two clashing forces will ultimately balance each other out. Army Corps of Engineers as part of its funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, will help experts study the impact of rising waters and climate change on the shoreline. Chicago rising from the lake park. Gronewold said Chicago and other cities around the Great Lakes are all in danger of not being able to handle these extreme highs -- and extreme lows. The past five years collectively have been the wettest half-decade on record.

However, once the November order is approved by the U. EPA, it will relieve the 48 municipalities and agencies from having to meet these stricter standards so long as they continue to show reductions in chloride usage. Chicago Rising From The Lake | "Chicago Rising From The Lake…. The sculpture was conserved and installed on the Columbus Drive Bridge in 1998 as part of the development of the path along the Chicago River. You can feel him looking at her and her at him, " said Paula Ellis in a 2001 Chicago Tribune article by Robert L. Kaiser. Once it is in water, there isn't much municipalities can do to remove it. "You can meditate if you're feeling down, feeling happy.

Captions are provided by our contributors. Taken on March 8, 2012. The sewage-laced muck smelled "like rotten eggs, " he said. Slaughter mostly worried about making it through the inconvenience of the basement flooding and the temporary loss of power. The lake was higher than the river level, so water could not be reversed. Lake Michigan levels dropping, revealing how much work is needed to repair Chicago's eroded beaches. Northwest side of the Columbus Drive Bridge. That turned out to be but a prelude to what the 21st century would bring.

Chicago Rising From The Lake City

The sculpture is symbolic of the city of Chicago. According to the board, the goal of the order "is not to avoid compliance, but rather to create a transparent tool, as authorized under the Clean Water Act, that allows incremental progress in reducing chloride while recognizing the issues presented in our State by the use of road salt during the winter months to maintain public safety. The building's existing floodwater fortifications, along with a study exploring a more permanent offshore breakwater to dissipate the force of the surf, have already cost the co-op's residents some $450, 000. But in the heaviest storms, even the river and canal system could get overwhelmed. At 6:16 p. the river hit +3. And it was too much for the river to handle. Twenty-two beaches opened for Memorial Day weekend, and a few souls braved the still ice-cold waters or sweltered on towels in the sand. Last year's rainfall, however, was so severe that for the first time that backup system didn't work. "He continues his whistle long enough for every man to turn each screw one complete round of the thread. Now, she is concerned that the relentless waves may cause structural damage to her nearly 100-year-old building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A Tug of War Between Lake and Sky.

".. don't have the luxury of waiting anymore. As the relatively warm water evaporates, it quickly condenses in the frigid air into a thin layer of steam. They talked a little bit and assumed yoga poses, looking out over the sparkling blue water. Ray said most Chicagoans appeared to heed the advice as most roads were empty, minus delivery trucks on Friday. The beach will remain open during the renovation. Temporary (beach closure) means many, many years in city-talk. Nowhere has the lake been more menacing to lakefront property owners than the working-class neighborhood along South Shore Drive, about 10 miles south of downtown, where Ms. "You didn't quite know what it was, but you saw things floating in it. Yet the fortifications have proven a feeble match for breakers that can push around the hunks of concrete and can float 3, 000-pound cars like bars of soap in a bathtub. The ripples along the bottom indicate Lake Michigan and other elements refer to aspects of Chicago's history and importance: the sheaf of wheat in her left hand represents the grain trade; the bull on her right recalls the Union Stockyards and the city's role as meat processor; the eagle indicates Chicago's role as an air transportation center; while the plant forms in the background respond to the city motto: Urbs in Horto (City in a Garden). The lake may have other plans.

"We were told, 'You'll never see this kind of water again in your lifetime, '" the 70-year-old retired Amtrak employee recalled in early May. The mule-drawn barges that worked its canals long ago gave way to trains, planes and eighteen-wheelers. 51 inches, swamped Chicago. Metropolis on Stilts. "When water levels go down, they have to do what's called light load. And it's basically stripped sand off of the old infrastructure that was buried by the beach, " Mattheus said, describing Rainbow Beach. The idea is that, when rainstorms hit, the extra runoff can be safely warehoused. The region's 200+ shoreline communities have already spent $878 million in the past two years repairing damages from extreme weather events, and estimates could reach over $2 billion in the next five years. Sand loss in places like Rainbow Beach revealed old lakefill material, what appears to be cement pieces used as the foundation of houses, and other debris, according to Robin Mattheus, a coastal geology research scientist with the Illinois State Geological Survey. But his crew needed him back because the rains that had been pounding the city for three days were threatening Chicago in a fashion no one had experienced. Unlimited downloads. Part of the problem, Kuykendall said, is the tendency to use more salt than is necessary out of an abundance of caution, or a fear of liability should someone slip and fall.

Three days earlier, a relentless storm had dropped a record 24-hour rainfall for that date.