The two stormwater basins at Our Lady of Ransom Parish and Maryhill Cemetery are now fully functional. A ceremonial pouring of water at the OLR basin will be conducted on Thursday, December 4 with a “blessing” from a representative of the Catholic Archdiocese. The cereomony will start at Our Lady of Ransom at 9:30 a.m.
The Stormwater Commission, Niles officials, and staff have been working hard to ensure the success of these huge projects. These two basins will hold 15-acre feet of stormwater or enough water to fill eight Olympic size swimming pools during a 100-year storm event. In order to complete these projects, 31,000 Cubic Yards or 2,850 semi-trucks of earth were moved to other jobsites, dumps, etc.
Both projects were identified as Tier One projects and designed by Hey & Associates and the Niles Stormwater Commission that was formed after the September 2008 flooding. As Niles was largely built before storm water detention ordinances became commonplace, there are few storm water detention facilities within the Village. These projects were completed by excavating large sums of soil and hauling that soil away to a variety of offsite locations, and by installing storm sewers, some as large as 36” diameter. Area stormwater will be diverted into these basins during storm events which will temporarily hold the water and release the water back into the storm sewer system at a controlled rate. The expected results are to reduce street flooding for Our Lady of Ransom area streets (Normal, Lincoln, Bruce and Greenwood) and Maryhill Cemetery area streets (Milwaukee and Main), basement flooding, and overland flooding in surrounding neighborhoods.
In other stormwater news, the $9M, 74-inch Cleveland sewer separation project has recently been approved for licensing at the Forest Preserve of Cook County.
Please find the attached invitation with more information on the Grand Opening Ceremony.