Before the Lucas Museum came along, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s most visible legacy project was the reinvention of the city’s riverfront. The construction of six new blocks of the Riverwalk would be his sparkling achievement, the Emanuel version of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Millennium Park.
The city has said it intends to pay down the federal loan it used to finance the construction with vendor fees. Last year vendors on the existing stretch of Riverwalk grossed $4.5 million in revenue and paid the city $355,000.
Since last summer, two plants operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District—one on 130th Street and one on Howard Street in Skokie—have begun disinfecting water flowing into the Chicago and Calumet Rivers. Prior to this, the 1.2 billion gallons of effluent released into the river every day were treated but not disinfected, allowing E. coli and other potentially harmful pathogens to enter the river. An MWRD spokesperson says it’s “too soon to discuss the impact,” but the data so far is promising: In tests comparing water samples taken from the southeast-side plant in April 2015 to those taken during the same month this year, the concentration of bacteria dropped from an average of 55,996 colony forming units (CFU) per 100 ml to just 13. The Illinois standard for safe swimming is 235 CFU.
As for swimming in the river, like the construction, it’s also a work in progress, Frisbie says—maybe within five years. But, she says, “We are going to start figuring out where good swimming and wading places should be.” v
