Prospective members are invited to attend their first two meetings at the Rotary Club of Skokie Valley free of charge. Advance reservations are not required.

Lunch is $18 for members, visitors and guests. Meetings begin at 12:15 PM & end at 1:30 PM every Tuesday.

 

Alternative Meals:

A limited number of alternative meals are available. If you prefer to have an alternative meal, please pick up a card at the check-in table & display it at your table setting or if you're in late, ask a fellow Rotarian to order for you. This will allow the staff to put your selection in as soon as possible:

 

Vegetarian Pasta Primavera - Green Card

Cheeseburger - Red Card

 

The Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), also known as “Deep Tunnel,” is a system of deep, large diameter tunnels and vast reservoirs designed to reduce flooding, improve water quality in Chicago area waterways and protect Lake Michigan from pollution caused by sewer overflows. TARP captures and stores combined storm water and sewage that would otherwise overflow from sewers into waterways in rainy weather. This stored water is pumped from TARP to water reclamation plants (WRPs) to be cleaned before being released to waterways. The four TARP tunnel systems are designed to flow to three huge reservoirs, and the system will have a capacity of 20.55 billion gallons when complete. That is 5,480 gallons for each person in its service area. One of the largest civil engineering projects on earth, TARP has been extremely effective and widely emulated since the initial tunnels went online in 1981.

 

 

Like many older cities, Chicago has a combined sewer system in which sanitary sewage from homes, offices and industries drain into the same pipes as storm water. Most of these combined sewers were built before wastewater treatment existed and were designed to drain directly into rivers. In the early 20th century, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) built large intercepting sewers to redirect sewers to newly built WRPs to clean the water. This system works well in dry weather, but in heavy rains the intercepting sewers and WRPs can reach capacity and result in combined sewer overflows (CSOs) to the river, impairing water quality and contributing to flooding.

 

 

As development spread through the Chicago area in the early 20th century, paved surfaces directed increasing amounts of storm water runoff into the combined sewer system. By the 1960s, Chicago area sewers were overflowing to the river more than 100 days a year and flooding had become a persistent issue. In 1967, officials of the MWRD, the state of Illinois, Cook County and the city of Chicago formed the Flood Control Coordinating Committee to find a solution to the region’s flooding and water pollution problems caused by combined sewer overflows. The committee considered 50 alternatives and selected TARP as the most cost-effective approach to providing maximum benefits with minimal negative impacts. The most obvious solution, replacing combined sewers with separate storm and sanitary pipes, was determined to be too costly, disruptive to communities, and unable to provide flood relief. The MWRD officially adopted TARP as the area’s plan to comply with federal and state water quality standards in 1972.

 

 

TARP tunnel construction began in 1975. Construction was planned so that completed portions of the system could be put into operation as work continued elsewhere. The scale and depth of the project was unlike anything previously undertaken and required innovative approaches to tunneling. Newly- developed tunnel boring machines were used instead of traditional blasting to minimize vibrations, expedite progress, reduce damage to surrounding rock and lower costs for long sections of tunnels. To protect groundwater from leakage and protect the tunnels from water infiltration, cracks in the limestone were sealed with grout and the tunnels were lined with concrete. The Upper Des Plaines Tunnel System, located near O’Hare Airport, went online in 1981 and the entire tunnel system was operational in 2006.

The smallest of the TARP reservoirs, Gloria Alitto Majewski Reservoir was completed in 1998. Work is currently underway on the two larger reservoirs, McCook and Thornton, which are being excavated from limestone by commercial quarry operators. Excavation of Thornton Reservoir is complete and it will be online in 2015. The first stage of McCook Reservoir is scheduled to go online in 2017. Partnering with commercial quarries has allowed these huge reservoirs to be completed economically and efficiently.

 

 

TARP has been extremely successful in preventing flooding and pollution caused by combined sewer overflows and will be more effective when the larger reservoirs are online. Since the tunnels became operational, CSOs have been reduced from an average of 100 days per year to 50. As water quality has improved, our waterways have become home to increasingly healthy and diverse fish populations and popular destinations for recreation. Other cities around the world have taken note of TARP’s success and are now undertaking similar deep tunnel projects.