Flood veterans say they feel sandbagged by new project

Wading down his flooded basement stairs, Bill Jew brushes past an eraser board, his shoulder smearing the handwritten "God Bless Our House" message. From his perch on the landing, he watches his refrigerator float by in the dark.

He shut off his electricity when the water rose to the outlets. He shut off the gas after his dryer broke free from its mooring.

Contents of the Jew family's furnished basement and second kitchen are awash in 6 feet of dirty water.

This doesn't mesh with the routine of calmly tracking flood stage levels that the flood-savvy homeowners in this Walnut Avenue neighborhood of Des Plaines generally follow.

"Typically, we get to 5 or 6 feet (above the flood level), and we say, 'Should we bag?'" explains Dan Whisler, 47, who has lived in his house at 1645 E. Walnut Ave. for the last decade. If the river keeps rising, the neighbors head to the sandbagging station at the local church and, with the help of volunteers, and sump pumps, protect their homes from a few inches of water in their basements.

"We built this wall three times in the last five years," Greg Whisler, Dan's 48-year-old brother, says of the sandbag barrier around his house next door, where he has lived for 22 years.

This is the first time the floodwaters have won that battle - dumping lots of water into basements of everyone in the flood plain along Walnut Avenue, the brothers say.

"Something changed significantly," Dan Whisler says. "The big change is the speed at which the river rose."

Residents say that even in the worst of floods, the neighborhood wasn't hit this fast or this hard.

"It wasn't this bad in 1986 or '87," says Mary Auer, who lives with her 92-year-old dad, William, in the house where she's lived since 1954. "It didn't happen this fast."

Surprised when more than an inch of water seeped into the basement at 1666 E. Walnut Ave. for the first time in a dozen years, Jew and his family leapt into action to protect their basement. They weren't fast enough.

"In 45 minutes, it went from 1 inch to 3 feet," says Jew, 46. "It filled up so fast."

In the time it took him to cut a piece of plywood to barricade the basement door, the waters had risen to his chest.

Why was this storm so different?

Officials say the record rainfall - more than 10 inches in a day in some areas - caused flooding problems in areas that might not have seen flooding in earlier storms.

The neighbors have a different theory. They blame new construction upstream and the building of the new multimillion-dollar Levee 50 that is part of a Des Plaines' river walk project that includes bike and horse paths.

Levee 50 may have alleviated flooding for some areas, but it has made things worse for the residents on Walnut Avenue, Dan Whisler says.

"I'm not convinced of that," State Rep. Rosemary Mulligan tells the Daily Herald's Joe Ryan during a news conference with the governor and other officials. Mulligan says officials are working on improving the flooding situation.

The new levee was constructed by the state of Illinois in conjuncture with the Army Corps of Engineers.

"This one came on terribly fast," says Arlan Juhl, division manager of the office of water resources for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Juhl tells Daily Herald reporter Eric Peterson that even though the suddenness of this storm overwhelmed some homeowners, the flood projects - some still in the works - make the situation better.

"Our Des Plaines flood teams say that in their opinion, the situation would have been much worse without the project in place," concurs Lynne Whelan, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Residents don't buy it.

"Flooding was minor until they built that wall over there," Jew says of the Levee 50 project. "Their project - their stupid river walk - is more important than our lives."

"Something stinks," Dan Whisler says.

The situation really stinks for the Jew family, who probably suffered the most damage on the block, and now has a new perspective on some of his problems.

"Two days ago, I was bitching about a skunk living under there," Jew says, wading toward his back porch and pointing. "Want to see him? He's floating."