What went wrong with Dixmoor’s water?
How squabbling and crumbling infrastructure left thousands without ‘a human right’ in south suburb
For at least two weeks, Ginger Williams found only a trickle of water each time she tried to wash her hands. She lived two weeks without a shower in her home. Two weeks without being able to flush the toilet.
“It’s horrible and embarrassing,” said Williams, 51, who has lived in south suburban Dixmoor since 1971.
Williams and thousands of other Dixmoor residents spent much of October without reliable water, a crisis that caused schools and businesses to close, resulted in a weekslong boil order and sent people scrambling to the homes of family and friends — or even hotels — to meet basic needs.
Dixmoor, which buys its water from neighboring Harvey, pointed the finger there. Harvey pushed the blame back on Dixmoor. State and county politicians made statements. And for about two weeks, Dixmoor entered into an emergency water agreement with Blue Island as an interim measure.
Water pressure has returned to Dixmoor, for now. But a Tribune review of court and village documents revealed Dixmoor has experienced water problems for at least two years, with little success in rectifying them.
Village officials were aware as early as 2019 about leaks that caused their water bill to balloon, according to village meeting minutes, but efforts to locate the leaks faltered amid disagreements among Dixmoor officials.
The small town is just one of many south suburbs beset with aging infrastructure that is prone to leaks and water loss for which residents, nonetheless, still pay. The cost of overhauling the system often outstrips the resources in the towns, many of which are low-income.
Some towns have fallen behind on their water bills and owe millions of dollars to Chicago, which supplies much of the suburban water. In recent years, Chicago has sued at least three towns, including Harvey, for nonpayment of water bills, alleging they moved money from their towns’ water funds to general funds. Chicago says its taxpayers shouldn’t be stuck with the bills. But the suburbs say they are strapped for cash, impossibly behind and need relief.
“Lake Michigan is a regional resource, and we need to think about how we’re managing it as a region,” said Justin Keller, a manager at the Metropolitan Planning Council who has studied water issues in the region.
‘Water is a human right’
On Saturday, Oct. 16, water went out for many residents in Dixmoor. The village of about 3,600, about 20 miles south of downtown Chicago, is a predominantly Black and Latino community, with 20% of its residents living below the poverty line.
It has experienced problems with its water supply for years — but last month’s widespread loss of water for residents plunged it into a fresh crisis.
Teresa Gerritsen, who has lived in Dixmoor for three years, had to shower and do laundry at her mother’s house. She had to pick up water at the Village Hall. It was emotionally taxing, and she had to temporarily stop driving for Uber Eats and Instacart.
“I lost money to help me pay rent,” said 51-year-old Gerritsen, who is a school bus driver.
Officials, including those brought in by Cook County, struggled to identify the problem: Was it in Dixmoor or in the city of Harvey, then Dixmoor’s sole water provider? Or both?
Two companies, Robinson Engineering and M.E. Simpson, were brought in to investigate and the problem soon was reportedly narrowed down to a feeder water main on Wood Street, running between Harvey and Dixmoor.
But a few days later, Harvey Mayor Christopher J. Clark — speaking about the situation for the first time, more than a week after the problems began — said a manager from M.E. Simpson identified the problem’s source as a break in a water main running through the woods near Interstate 57 and Robey Avenue in Dixmoor that was leaking about 500 gallons of water per minute. Michael Simpson, owner of M.E. Simpson, confirmed the account to the Tribune.
But Dixmoor Village President Fitzgerald Roberts maintained that there must still be a problem with Harvey’s water pressure. He said that even if there was a hole in one of Dixmoor’s water mains,
the water pressure coming from Harvey was not sufficient.
Simpson said his firm also checked the feeder line from Harvey to Dixmoor and found that it met required standards. Representatives from Robinson Engineering did not return a message from the Tribune.
During the water outage, there was little communication between the two leaders, according to both Roberts and Clark. Both leaders spoke to the Tribune in interviews, and each pointed the finger at the other.
“I don’t trust Harvey,” Roberts told the Tribune in an interview over Zoom.
And Clark decried what he saw as a “blame game.”
“If we treat it as a game, it gives the impression that it’s not important,” he told the Tribune. “And it’s extremely important that the people of Dixmoor have water.”
Both sides said that they had tried calling each other more than once, but without success.
“As far as going back and forth with Clark, I’m wasting time,” Robert said, adding that he was “checking other avenues,” such as the county, to see if officials could help find funding and interact with Harvey.
Dixmoor’s boil order was lifted on Wednesday, and the village disconnected the temporary line from Blue Island.
A town spokesperson said the water pressure is “serviceable” but not as strong as Dixmoor officials would like. They left the Blue Island line in place so that it could be quickly reconnected if future problems arise. The spokesperson said officials are looking into solutions for people with water bills from the outage.
“When we were approached, we wanted to do something. Dixmoor hadn’t had water for nearly a week,” said Blue Island Mayor Fred Bilotto. “Access to clean water is a human right.”
Interconnected water system
Harvey purchases water from Chicago, and in turn sells it to five municipalities: Dixmoor, Hazel Crest, East Hazel Crest, Posen and Homewood. Homewood, in turn, sells water to Flossmoor.
The agreement is representative of an intertwined and sometimes Byzantine system that takes water from Lake Michigan and snakes it to cities and towns in the region.
Most south suburban towns get water from Lake Michigan through Chicago or Hammond, with the water sometimes moving through other towns first. It wouldn’t be feasible for each town to connect to Lake Michigan itself, and Chicago has the capacity to pump water to the region, Keller said.
“There’s some conflict now on whether the issue in Dixmoor is because of Dixmoor’s infrastructure or Harvey’s. It highlights the interconnected nature of our water situation,” he said.
Now, two of Harvey’s downstream water-buying municipalities are planning to end their deals with Harvey. Homewood and East Hazel Crest have said they plan to receive water from Hammond, via Chicago Heights, instead.
Thomas Brown, mayor of East Hazel Crest, said its decision to leave was primarily financial — the town was offered a better rate.
Brown, though, said he was concerned after the city of Chicago sued Harvey in 2012 alleging that the town was not paying the city for its water. Chicago also accused Harvey of improperly borrowing from its water fund.
Harvey was placed under a consent decree, and a court-appointed receiver was given control of the water fund for about three years, from 2017 to 2020. Harvey regained control of the water fund earlier this year, though it is still under a consent decree.
The receiver, Robert Handler, said his team was able to make progress in paying back Chicago and making some infrastructure improvements.
“We took over the water bank accounts and stopped Harvey’s borrowing from the water fund,” Handler said. “We put a lot of resources into reducing lost water.”
Dixmoor’s past problems
At a Dixmoor village meeting in December 2019, officials reported an increase in the town’s water usage, citing it as evidence that “there is ... something going on with our water system,” according to meeting minutes. Officials said engineers had found one leak, but had been working for five weeks to find further leaks.
About a month later, in January 2020, Paris Steele, the village’s superintendent of public works and water, reported that mobile homes on the western edge of town were experiencing low water pressure.
In the ensuing months, water problems came up regularly at Dixmoor meetings. Officials noted that residents frequently had low water pressure, and that the town’s bill, owed to Harvey, was rapidly increasing due to an apparent leak somewhere in the system.
But officials squabbled over whether to continue hiring firms to search for the leaks.
In response to reports of leaks, Roberts, then a trustee, balked at paying the engineering firms. He argued that the village should only hire someone who wouldn’t charge Dixmoor unless they found a leak, according to meeting minutes. He put forward a name, but other officials, including thenMayor Yvonne Davis, said the person wasn’t credentialed.
“Everybody needs the same credential to come here in the village to do work,” she said.
Steele, the public works superintendent, pointed out that no one would work for free.
In an interview, Roberts told the Tribune that an engineering firm contracted by the village came out but did not find a leak.
When asked by the Tribune whether the village kept trying to find the leaks that were causing the water bill to increase, Roberts said that the crews the village hired were not successful.
“My take on it was, we already know we have a leak. Why are we paying $10,000 for something we already know?” Roberts told the Tribune. “We couldn’t find that big leak.”
Messages to Davis seeking comment were not returned.
Meanwhile, the bill owed to Harvey kept growing, and the court-ordered receiver handling Harvey’s water fund began demanding payment.
In April 2020, Handler, the receiver, wrote to Davis to alert her that Dixmoor owed Harvey more than $660,000.
“During this receivership, Dixmoor has generally been current on its water account with Harvey,” Handler wrote. “The recent failure to make payments is unusual, which is why I am reaching out to you directly.”
In a report Handler filed with the court in December 2020, he wrote that Dixmoor’s balance had grown to more than $1.6 million.
“We noticed that Dixmoor’s bill, its usage, was doubling,” Handler told the Tribune in an interview. “We pointed it out to Dixmoor more than once that something was going on, that its usage has doubled. … Demands that Dixmoor pay us went unheeded.”
Last month, Harvey filed a motion in the ongoing litigation with Chicago asking for a partial suspension of its payments to the city due to Dixmoor’s failure to pay Harvey for its water. It also asked to file a counterclaim against Dixmoor, arguing that the town owes Harvey more than $2 million for water.
Residents of Dixmoor are left to wade through a mess of politics while fearing the water problems will continue to occur.
It’s “very tragic (that) a resident who pays their water bill and taxes and lives in this area falls victim to a back-and-forth political game between Dixmoor and Harvey,” said Dixmoor resident Mark Muhammad, 50.
“It’s at our expense, and it’s no fun.”
Crumbling infrastructure
Throughout October, other towns around Dixmoor watched the village’s problems in trepidation.
Fear of his own water crisis is top of mind for Posen Village President Frank Podbielniak. So he spends about 20 minutes each morning driving around the 6,000-person town searching for telltale signs of a water leak. He looks for water bubbling up on curb lines or pooling on parkways.
“It’s an everyday worrisome feeling. You don’t know what can happen,” Podbielniak said. “This is the highest issue I have on our priority list.”
Podbielniak is happy with Harvey’s water supply, but worries about Posen’s aging infrastructure. A pumping station is falling apart. Lead pipes need to be removed.
“I don’t know where to get the money,” he said.
Podbielniak’s concerns are echoed by leaders across Chicago’s Southland. They say there are pockets of money available from the state, county and federal government. Small grants and loans allow them to make small but crucial upgrades that keep catastrophe at bay. But they’d need millions to completely overhaul water systems that would reliably produce clean and affordable water with minimal leakage.
“Most of my piping system is over 100 years old,” said Bilotto, the Blue Island mayor. “Our combined water and sewer system should be, in a perfect world, all upgraded. I’ve received estimates from engineering firms of $40 million to repave the streets. To touch the sewers, it would be hundreds of millions of dollars.”
A 2017 Tribune investigation found that cities and towns in the Chicago area lost millions in water that leaked out of a network of aging pipes, a cost disproportionately passed on to low-income and minority communities.
“It’s a major problem. It’s been a major problem for years,” said Cook County Commissioner Deborah Sims, who represents Dixmoor and surrounding towns.
Though water loss and old infrastructure is a problem in nearly every community across the country, lower-income communities like Dixmoor disproportionately struggle to pay for infrastructure improvements. Residents then are stuck with rising water bills when water lost to the ground through leaks still trips the meters.
Some towns face steep water debts. In recent years, Chicago has sued Harvey, Robbins and Dolton for unpaid water bills, accusing the towns of mismanaging their water funds.
Robbins Mayor Darren Bryant, though, pointed to the difficulty of paying the more than $14 million the town owes Chicago while its infrastructure needs so much work.
“We need some type of forgiveness,” he said.
Robbins did recently secure $2 million from the state to revitalize its pumping station — a step in the right direction, he said, but not sufficient to solve all its problems, Bryant said.
Keller noted that Chicago’s south suburbs developed when people flocked there due to industrial and manufacturing jobs on the South Side of Chicago. When those jobs went away, population declined, but the towns still must maintain water infrastructure from the area’s peak population.
“A lot of the water infrastructure was built using federal funding but over the decades, an increasingly large share has fallen to the state and local level to maintain,” he said. “(Some towns) are not taking in tax revenue and other types of revenue to help them maintain this large system.”
Some are carefully watching the progress of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.
“I think the best thing to be done is for all of the communities to get together and with a combination of county, state and federal government, come up with some money to fix it,” Sims said.