Chicagoland Water and Wastewater Preparedness and Business Resiliency Summit, November 2007

The National Strategy Forum participated in a November 2007 summit co-sponsored by the Chicago Manufacturing Center, the City of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District titled "Chicagoland Water and Wastewater Preparedness and Business Resiliency Summit." The following was excerpted from the introductory remarks made by Mary A. Gade, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5.

We tend to think of buildings, roads, and bridges as critical infrastructure – things that business needs in order to function.

Most of us rarely think of drinking water and wastewater systems in the same way. Those systems have been so reliable for so long that we tend to take them for granted. Water has always been there when we needed it.

But there have been times when access to safe drinking water was curtailed or jeopardized. The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1993 is one example. This 500-year flood caused havoc all up and down the river. It took Herculean efforts by entities like the Illinois American Waterworks in Alton, Illinois, to keep clean drinking water coming in the face of raging floodwaters literally inches below the facility’s floor. Hurricane Katrina also comes to mind – as does the current drought in the Southeast and the Big Blackout of 2003, when power was cut off at water departments from New York to Michigan.

Today there is also a possibility – a very frightening possibility – that our drinking water systems could become the target of a terrorist attack. Fortunately, we’ve only seen that in our preparedness exercises. But it could happen. As you can see, we definitely should not take our water and wastewater systems for granted.

What would be the result in Chicago if these systems were not available for some reason? You could be without safe drinking water in your home and your business. You could lose the ability to discharge wastewater into the sewerage system – in other words, no flushing. These problems could exist for days, weeks, maybe even months depending on the problem. Millions of people could be affected.

In the City of Chicago alone there are 4,200 miles of water mains. Certainly, the Chicago business community would be affected by a disruption of water systems. And when Chicago business is affected, the whole country is affected. For example, Chicago is a major hub for day-to-day business nationwide. Half of all rail traffic moves through Chicago. And more than 400,000 trucks leave Chicago each day carrying the goods that drive our nation’s economy.

Moody’s Investor Services rates Chicago as the country’s most diversified economy. Our city is known not just for its manufacturing, but also for transportation and logistics, securities and commodities trading, telecommunications, and many other diverse economic sectors. In fact, if the 14-county Chicagoland metropolitan area was an independent country, it would have the 19th largest economy in the world. •