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Northeast Illinois Regional Water Authority ― An Agency Whose Need Is Long Past Due


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Recent Developments


The DuPage Water Commission (DWC) announced on May 8, 2024, the purchase of the 127-acre former Green Acres Golf Club in Northbrook, Illinois. No, the DWC isn’t going into the recreation business. The acquisition is about fifteen miles from the nearest part of DuPage County. Why? It is the latest in the fulfillment of a long standing dream for DuPage County to have its own straw in Lake Michigan.


The dream helped reignite the long simmering (since 1922) litigation between Illinois and the Lake States (MI, MN, NY, OH, PA, and WI) over the diversion of water at Chicago from the Lake Michigan watershed to the Mississippi River. In 1959, the tree towns (Elmhurst, Lombard, and Villa Park) announced their intention to build a pipeline from Lake Michigan in Lake County, IL, to have their own straw in the lake to bring them drinking water because their deep groundwater wells were beginning to run dry.


The pipeline was never built, water was purchased from the City of Chicago, and the litigation resulted in the historic 1967 US Supreme Court Decree that allowed Illinois to divert water for domestic purposes and to keep Chicago-region canals and rivers in reasonably sanitary conditions. Later, the DWC was created and entered into a forty-year contract with the City of Chicago to purchase purified drinking water for distribution to municipalities and other water users in DuPage County.


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