Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates to establish emergency connection of water systems
Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg are establishing an emergency interconnect between their water systems to be better prepared for the type of rare problem that happened earlier this year.
They along with the neighboring suburbs of Elk Grove Village, Hanover Park, Mount Prospect, Rolling Meadows and Streamwood found themselves already prepared to rely on backup sources during the four-day repair of a leak in a Northwest Suburban Municipal Joint Action Water Agency water main in the spring.
Hoffman Estates Mayor Bill McLeod said his village had kept its wells in working order for such an eventuality in addition to having already completed an emergency interconnect with unaffected Palatine.
“We’re trying to make water systems as redundant as possible,” he said. “You try to make sure everything is as foolproof as possible.”
That’s why the village was ready for last spring’s system-wide shutdown even though such an event had never affected the Northwest suburban water agency in its 40 years, Hoffman Estates Public Works Director Joe Nebel said.
A connection with Schaumburg’s system is now considered mutually beneficial because of Schaumburg’s existing interconnect with the DuPage Water Commission and Hoffman Estates’ with Palatine.
Because of a possible leak in the JAWA network near O’Hare detected last year, work on a Schaumburg-Hoffman Estates interconnect began on an emergency basis. But that older leak hasn’t affected the system the way this year’s at Elmhurst Road and I-90 did, Nebel said.
The less than $100,000 of work put into the interconnect so far would already allow Schaumburg at its lower elevation to easily borrow water from Hoffman Estates’ system, he added. But the addition of pumps would be the most effective way for water to flow in the opposite direction.
The intergovernmental agreement both villages are approving would pave the way to studying how best to improve the connection and make it equally valuable to each of them, Nebel said.
A once proposed interconnect with Elgin failed to come to pass, but McLeod said he hasn’t ruled out trying again in the future. He views it as the best potential backup for the west side of his village.
The recognized opportunity for such interconnects is relatively new, probably because of developing technology, he added. The connection with Palatine, for which Hoffman Estates’ equal share cost $1.3 million, was only two years old when its usefulness was proved this spring.