Every small town has one. Usually more than one. The house with the sagging porch roof and the tree growing out of the gutter, windows sheeted over with plywood that went gray years ago. Everybody [...]
If you've read the whole series, you could be forgiven for feeling like the situation is hopeless. Failing pipes, unfunded mandates, debt-only "help," retiring operators, volunteer governments stretched to the breaking point. Article after article [...]
Every article in this series has described enormous, complicated jobs. Borrow millions for a treatment plant. Meet an EPA lead-line mandate. Run a competitive grant application with engineering reports attached. File the compliance paperwork. Manage [...]
Every article in this series so far has been about things: pipes, tanks, plants, drains, dollars. But none of those things run themselves. Behind every small-town water system is a person who knows which valve [...]
Picture a village sitting flat on the Illinois prairie. No creek runs through it. No lake sits at the edge of town. In every direction, right up to the last row of houses, there is [...]
If you've read this far in the series, you've probably had the same reaction most people have. Surely somebody is helping with all this. Surely there are programs. There are. That's the trap. Illinois small [...]
Drinking water has a water bill. Sewer service has a sewer bill. Storm drainage, the third system every town depends on, has nothing. No bill, no fund, no line item with its name on it. [...]
Nobody thinks about water after it goes down the drain. That is the whole point of a sewer system. It takes the dirtiest part of daily life and makes it invisible. Until it stops working. [...]
Turn on your kitchen faucet and clean water comes out. It feels automatic, like flipping a light switch. It isn't. That water traveled through a well or intake, a treatment plant, a storage tank and [...]
Every small town in Illinois runs on three systems almost nobody thinks about. One brings clean water to your tap. One carries the dirty water away. One moves rainwater off your street before it ends [...]
