Chicago’s ‘New Normal’ Pushing Stormwater Infrastructure to Its Limit
As storms that were once considered outliers become increasingly regular occurrences in Chicago, the city’s stormwater system is struggling to keep pace.
When the city found itself under a tornado warning on August 12, the question of how much Chicago’s stormwater infrastructure can withstand has become even harder to ignore.
In 2024, a multidisciplinary team led by Illinois Tech Professor of Political Science Matthew Shapiro anticipated that increasingly frequent and intense storms could further deepen Chicago’s stormwater inequities, particularly on the city’s South and West sides.
Shapiro warns that the increasing frequency of extreme rainfall is putting additional strain on an already stressed system.
“Given the fact that there are these more-extreme weather events that are occurring with even greater frequency, it’s now exacerbating whatever stresses were already being placed on the system,” Shapiro says.
When pipes become overwhelmed, the consequences rise to the surface. Water spills into streets and basements, turning a passing storm into an ordeal that lingers long after the skies clear.
Shapiro says preparing for Chicago’s new normal of extreme rainfall will require more than just expanding traditional infrastructure. The city will need to take a combination of approaches, from retention basins and green spaces to getting better data showing where those investments can make the biggest difference.
And as the cost of recovery soars, Shapiro has noticed that public officials have become more receptive to these interventions.
“Prevention costs so much less than post-disaster recovery,” says Shapiro.
On campus at Illinois Tech, Shapiro and his team are studying what prevention can look like in practice. Newly planted meadows are being used to measure how much rain can be absorbed by prairie landscapes before it reaches the city’s sewer system.
“We’re using Illinois Tech to see exactly how much rain can be prevented from running into the sewer if we have these kinds of prairies across the entire campus,” Shapiro says, explaining that Illinois Tech is serving as a test case for what could be implemented across Chicago.
