Celebrating 35 Years: Deep Tunnel
35 Facts for CNT’s 35 Years: Each week we’ll expand on one fun fact. Enjoy!
#3 Deep Tunnel
Maybe we were just ahead of our time. In the late 1970s, the early days of CNT, we had the radical notion that multiple, smaller investments in infrastructure were better than a gargantuan, one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a concept that’s certainly more in vogue now, in fields from planning to engineering to fundraising. (Heck, just ask a certain former CNT board member about the impact of thousands of small donations…)
Back then, though, we were attempting to advocate our position as relative Davids in the face of a Goliath called “Deep Tunnel.” This time, David didn’t fare as well.
Photo: Chicago Tribune (Oct. 9, 1980)
The Deep Tunnel Project, officially known as the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), was commissioned in the mid-1970s and billed as a solution to reduce flooding in the Chicago region and curtail the flow of raw sewage into Lake Michigan. As civil engineering projects go, Deep Tunnel was in a league of its own: a megaproject.
CNT was part of a larger coalition of organizations and individuals called the TARP Impacts Project (TIP), which initially came together over the proposed price tag of Deep Tunnel relative to its projected impact. The $7.3 billion budget translated to $4,000 per Chicago-area household, or over $100 million per neighborhood in the region. TIP, and CNT, believed that smaller, more affordable, and more direct actions could work as well or better than the pricy Deep Tunnel.
Construction on Deep Tunnel continues today, more than 35 years later, and completion may not be achieved until 2029. That’s still a ways off, but even back in April of 1978, the authors of The Neighborhood Works were already thinking ahead:
“Futurologists gazing into Chicago’s crystal ball today might see two alternative futures: the gray one of a region made bankrupt by poor planning and the ‘rainstorm bottle’ which TARP represents, or the ‘green’ future of working neighborhoods which the TIP project hopes to facilitate.”
The reality of 2013 is that we are somewhere in between those two alternative futures. However, it’s safe to say that, collectively, we have learned many lessons about the benefits of smaller, place-based solutions, like catching raindrops where they fall and other neighborhood flood reduction strategies. It may even be safe to say that our once-fringe ideas are now part of mainstream thinking.
In fact, at the national, state, regional, and local levels, stormwater management experts now wholeheartedly embrace the concept of stormwater green infrastructure. Ben Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water at US EPA noted in 2011 that, “Green infrastructure can be both a cost effective and an environmentally preferable approach to reduce stormwater and other excess flows entering combined or separate sewer systems in combination with, or in lieu of, centralized hard infrastructure solutions.”
Somehow, that doesn’t seem so deep.
We’re celebrating CNT’s 35 years of impact on sustainable urban development through 35 weeks of posts like this one. If you have a story or picture from our past, please share it with Anjuli@cnt.org. Thanks!
CNT’s work is made possible, in part, through generous support from individual donors. Please click here to make a gift in honor of our 35th anniversary.
Next week: #4 Building Solar Greenhouses in Food Deserts
