Greetings

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) is one of the world’s largest wastewater treatment agencies, serving the equivalent of 10 million people with an annual budget of approximately $1 billion (one of the largest public budgets in Illinois). I ran for a seat on the Board of Commissioners in 2006 because I think water is going to be “the” issue in years to come and I believe that today more than ever. I am one of nine elected commissioners and chair the committees on Stormwater Management and State Legislation and Rules.

I am running for re-election because I want to continue advocating for sound management of our precious water resources and to help lead the transformation of the MWRD into an agency that focuses on resource recovery — turning solid waste into energy and recognizing that no water is “waste” but is, instead, a valuable asset essential to life on earth.

Each year since I took office, I have made it a practice to produce a report on my activities — to tell the people of Cook County what I have been working on and to share my thoughts on some of the challenges we face. In 2010, for instance, Cook County experienced historic rainfall causing severe flooding. Moreover, MWRD was faced with a revenue shortfall prompting difficult budget cutbacks, and issues involving water quality in the Chicago River and waterway system.

The City of Chicago, as well as our society more broadly, has come a long way in terms of its relationship to the environment and, specifically, the Chicago River. When, more than 100 years ago, the Chicago Sanitary District dug the Sanitary and Ship Canal to reverse the flow of the river, it did so with the explicit intent to wash downstream all the raw sewage dumped directly into the waterways. As long as this sewage wasn't pouring into the lake from which people drank, city residents didn't give it a second thought. Since then, however, we have come to expect — and even demand — increasingly cleaner waterways. Norms have changed.

In 2004, the Dave Matthews Band dumped its tour bus sewage into the Chicago River — and onto people on a sightseeing boat below. People were horrified — and rightly so. We are no longer a society that views its waterways simply as sewers. Admittedly, the District's undisinfected effluent is much, much cleaner than raw sewage. But we can do better — we can remove large amounts of bacteria and viruses that survive secondary sewage treatment. And we must do better — for we have reached a point where our city and our county demand it.

I am proud to say that the Board of Commissioners voted in June 2011 to support disinfection of the effluent being discharged from two of the largest treatment plants — the North Side plant located at Howard and McCormick Boulevard in Skokie and the Calumet Plant at 130th Street and Torrence Avenue in Chicago. MWRD must continue on an aggressive schedule to complete excavation of the Thornton and McCook reservoirs to help eliminate combined sewer overflows that still flush raw sewage into area waterways during storm events. But once these reservoirs are on line, the amount of bacteria in Chicago’s waterways should be dramatically reduced, even perhaps eliminated, making them far cleaner and more suitable for recreation.

I am also proud to say that I participated in the search for a new executive director for MWRD and, for the first time in 50 years, the board went outside the ranks of District employees to appoint David St. Pierre as the new director in June. He is bringing fresh ideas and a new perspective to the work of the agency. Change is coming.

Still, the 126 municipalities in Cook County and the Water Reclamation District face daunting challenges. How to reduce basement backups and flooding when climate change is producing more intense rain events that are highly-localized and less predictable? How to manage a large public budget with increasing energy costs, increasing health care costs for employees, and static revenues? How to deal with nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the discharged effluent that cause “dead zones”¯ downstream? What should be done about minute amounts of pharmaceuticals and other contaminants being detected in water supplies?

For more information about the issues facing our community and our water supply, view or download my 2010 annual report (and prior reports).

And, above all, thank you for the opportunity to serve.

Debra

PS: Periodically, I have been posting short essays on The Huffington Post — you can dip into them here — and sending out occasional electronic newsletters. If you would like to receive these, please sign up here.

And if you wish to connect with me on Twitter, go to twitter.com/debrashore.