Levee 37 work begins next month

Work on the long-awaited Levee 37 project will begin next month with the goal of protecting about 600 homes in Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights.

On March 13, village officials and construction crews will meet along the Des Plaines River, which has regularly overflowed onto adjoining property during major storms, to mark the beginning of the $23 million project, Mount Prospect Mayor Irvana Wilks said.

Getting permission to use land and figuring out what to do with excess water were two issues that delayed the project. But the Cook County Forest Preserve District hammered out an agreement to allow land for a levee. And the excess water will be stored on land owned by the Wheeling Park District, she said.

Authorities initially had been negotiating to store the water on Lake County Forest Preserve land, but the design favored by the forest preserve would have made that site too expensive and the plan fell through.

"This has been a long time coming," Wilks said.

The levee project is expected to cost about $23 million, according to documents from the Northwest Municipal Conference. The villages will pay less than 10 percent with the vast majority of the money coming from federal and state sources.

The levee will be a mix of concrete and soil to create a barrier to rising water. It will be considered a "dry levee" because it will not be in contact with the river at all times, but only when the river floods, he said.

The milelong levee will be built between Palatine and Central roads. It will be set back east of Des Plaines River Road, but part of it will likely be visible from the road, she said.

In August 2007, the region was hit with a major deluge that flooded the area near the river, which is part of a 150-mile tributary of the Mississippi River.

It prompted officials in Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights to redouble efforts to get the stalled levee project moving forward again. It was a replay of a 1987 flood that overwhelmed the area.

Single-family homes in Mount Prospect and townhouses and businesses in Prospect Heights were flooded in 2007, said Prospect Heights Mayor Pat Ludvigsen.

In the 2007 flood, damage was less only because flood control technology had evolved since then, Ludvigsen said. Still, the villages spent thousands of dollars at that time putting up concrete barriers and sandbags, which still couldn't prevent major flooding.

Then again last fall, heavy rains sparked by a Gulf Coast hurricane left the villages scrambling once more, spending thousands of dollars to put up concrete barriers and sandbags along River Road, which still couldn't prevent major flooding.