Posted on February 7, 2022
Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline will receive a $1.5 million investment in federal funding, allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to survey and study the shoreline. The project will seek to repair existing shoreline infrastructure and further protect against shoreline deterioration.
The project is being funded as a part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed late last year. After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completes their study, further funds will be allocated for the construction of shoreline infrastructure.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is the $1.3 trillion bi-partisan spending package, which seeks to modernize and rebuild America’s infrastructure. Illinois is slated to receive $17 billion in infrastructure funds from the package.
Steve Fisher, the deputy district engineer of the Chicago district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the organization expects the study to be completed in three years at a total cost of $3 million. The city has pledged to provide the other $1.5 million to pay for the study, which is set to begin this year.
“This reevaluation report will explore significant storm damage experienced along the at-risk reaches of the Lake Michigan shoreline,” Fisher said during a Jan. 27 press conference.
“Those include sites from Juneway Terrace, down through La Rabida Children’s hospital, down to the self water purification plant.”
Fisher explained the new study will build upon a study the organization completed on the shoreline 30 years ago. The initial study encompassed 9.5 miles of the shoreline, only going as far north as Montrose, and didn’t include Rogers Park and surrounding neighborhoods, Fisher said.
During the city’s press conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot reiterated the importance of the study.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been active partners in our shoreline efforts to date, but they are operating on a study that is 25 years old,” Lightfoot said. “Due to the many climate impacts on the shoreline, particularly over the last five years, reevaluation of this study is absolutely essential.”
Lightfoot said when the project reaches its conclusion, it may cost more than $500 million in total, yet stressed her belief that the initiatives would be well worth the cost.
“While we’ve worked to repair urgent damage, more long term solutions are needed to protect our shoreline and the communities who live, work and play alongside of it,” Lightfoot said. “Climate change is real and this is an issue we must address head on. This investment will go a long way in making that happen.”
Andrew Casper, a Loyola professor of environmental science, explained residents shouldn’t expect to see major changes along the lakeshore while USACE completes the initial study.
“This first phase is really about planning and scoping, there won’t be any construction,” he said. “The $1.5 million is small potatoes for a Corp of Engineers project. It’s going through the manual and saying okay here’s sixty different things we can do to protect the shoreline, which would work in an urban Great Lakes environment.”
Reuben Keller, a professor of environmental science at Loyola, explained that climate change has driven recent rapid fluctuations in Lake Michigan’s water levels.
Lake levels reached their highest points in history in 2020, according to the International Lake Superior Board of Control, which oversees water levels on the Lake Michigan-Huron basin. However, they have been decreasing ever since.
“Based on everything that we know, climate change is changing the way the lake levels go up and down and how long they stay up and how long they go down, and how far up and how far down they go,” he said.
Keller explained that increased precipitation and colder winters over the past years have contributed to the rapid fluctuations in water levels. The Great Lakes region has seen an increase of about 20% in total precipitation over the last several decades, he said.
He said colder winters have caused the lake to freeze over more frequently, which has impacted evaporation which affects how the lake levels fluctuate. He says that we can expect these climate conditions to persist.
“All of the climate model predictions say more precipitation over this part of the world, so expect that to continue and if anything to intensify, the colder winters have been driven a lot by these polar vortex situations that we’ve had,” he said. “I’m not a climatologist, but I understand they are likely to continue, they’re a result of the weakening of the jet stream which is likely to continue.”
Leslie Perkins, 49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden’s chief of staff, spoke about the importance of the federal investment in Rogers Park compared with other neighborhoods in Chicago.
“Up here in Rogers Park especially we have a unique first-hand perspective with buildings that are right along the lake, in other parts of the city there is usually a park or some sort of public property between them and the lake,” Perkins told The Phoenix.
Perkins said the shoreline in Rogers Park has been under threat in recent years.
“There’s been a lot of erosion in Rogers Park,” Perkins said. “Two years ago we were able to secure emergency shoreline rehabilitation funds for some of our beaches. There was armor rock installed to mitigate the effects of high lake levels we have seen and erosion that has been eating away at public land.”
Seawalls — concrete structures built parallel to the shoreline which seek to protect the shoreline from erosion and wave action — have also been collapsing, she explained. Temporary measures, such as boulders and amour rock installations, by the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Park District have prevented further destruction and erosion at Rogers Park beaches, The Phoenix reported, but there’s more work to be done, Perkins said.
“What we’re hoping to see from the study is repurposing some of the armor rock that was installed along our shoreline to create breakwaters further out in the lake, which change the wave interaction with the shoreline,” she said.
Perkins said the alderwoman’s office hopes to see sustainable erosion mitigation put in place along the shoreline.
“We’re hoping that there can be a combination of some of the engineering techniques which try to preserve some of the ecology of this precious asset,” she said.
Perkins said community outreach will be a priority as the USACE work on their study.
Casper said the USACE will be more mindful of how their projects affect communities outside of their project areas during this new phase of work.
“I think that’s what’s going to make it into this new planning study is the realization that if you want to control damage from wave action in Lincoln Park, we’ve got to consider what’s happening in Waukegan,” he said. “If we spend $10 million dollars to improve the lakefront along Fullerton and Lincoln Park, we don’t want it to undercut what happens at Rainbow Park, that would be inefficient.”
Rogers Park has seen some of its beaches heavily damaged and destroyed by storms, due to years of erosion and rising lake levels, The Phoenix reported. Rogers Park residents, such as Tom Heineman, have been discouraged by the loss of beaches in the neighborhood.
“We went from three beaches to no beaches, we were happy to save the parks which were practically falling into the water,” Heineman, treasurer of the Rogers Park Builders Group, said. “The city did what they had to do, but we’re not real happy with the fact that we have no beaches and no access to the water.”
Keller said that climatologists expect that there will be more storms such as the one’s which destroyed the beaches in north Rogers Park in the future.
“The other part of the climate predictions for this part of the world is not just that we’re going to see more precipitation, but we’re gonna see more precipitation in fewer events,” he said. “Which is sort of climatologist speak for saying we’re going to see fewer storms but the storms that we do see are going to be much stronger.”
Heineman explained that he hopes the USACE will act sustainably in their project, and will use methods which foster growth of the beaches, which he says are so vital to the community.
“I would say we don’t just want shoreline protection as in more boulders or fixed cement,” he said. “We’d really like to see it redesigned so that there’s something sustainable that keeps the sand in place.”
He lobbied for a shoreline reconfiguration plan known as The Last Four Miles, which seeks to expand outward and create public land along the entirety of the city’s shoreline.
Climate change only continues to worsen these issues. Keller said the lake’s water levels will continue to dramatically increase and decrease in ways that current infrastructure is not built or prepared for.
“Over the next century we should expect to see higher and lower levels then we’re used to, levels spiking higher, levels going lower than we’ve seen, and we should expect the transitions between those to be faster,” he said.
Heineman said that the longer it takes the city to build up the shoreline’s resilience, more and more residents and their homes are going to be impacted. He said that several of his neighbors already have had to install pumps in their basements, which are always running pumping water back into the lake.
“I live across the street from the lake, and even I’m concerned about what will happen if the lake levels continue to rise beyond their highest points,” he said. “If there aren’t sustainable solutions put in place, eventually I may have abandoned buildings on the other side of the street.”
Casper was optimistic, he said this initial study is the first step towards suring up and protecting the city’s shoreline well into the future.
“The infrastructure bill is a big opportunity and this study is a part of that, no money was going to anything but damage control, you can think of it as the Corps of Engineers putting out fires,” he said. “It’s not about racing around putting out fires, it’s about deciding where am I gonna put the fire station.”
