MWRD Virtual Tour: Deep Tunnel, Wastewater Treatment, Green Infrastructure, Chicago Water History 

I don't think I've seen a better youtube video. Informative. Engaging. Hilarious. A++

What a friendly decent man who possesses a wonderfully comfortable personality and demeanor and makes it possible for me and probably most Chicagoland people take huge almost intimidating process that we have all grown up well aware of but had not a clue on how one goes about discovering its purpose???

Finally some well thought opera. Makes energy, cleans water, drain a city, helps moving goods

From the UK - A brilliant tour, well presented and very informative.

I have an associate degree in wastewater and worked in this industry for 3 years. I learned so much from this video, I had to give you a thumbs up and comment! Thank you!

I just watched this video and wanted to say I thought this was very well made.

The dancing bear is pretty awesome.

So glad i found your video. Your 11 yr old son is a genius.

i live on archer in between ashland and Loomis. bubbly creek is 5 blocks away from my house. ever since I was a kid, I am 25 now, Ive always had questions about our sewer system, water treatment, the river, and bubbly creek. thanks for answering just about every question I could ever have

Loved this. Would also love to buy the host a beer sometime!

I remembered my first year at IIT. During the orientation week a speaker from the Chicago Sanitation District talked about sludges which was shipped to Kanakakee farmland as fertilizer. Years later I learned the sludge dumping was banned because it contained harmful chemicals.

I lived a block from Bubbly Creek in the early seventies. I think the Union Stockyards had closed by then, but when the wind blew the right (wrong) way, the stench of over 100 years of waste would stop you in your tracks. As I understand, dredging is prohibited on the Chicago river due to "stirring up" the nasty filth that has finally settled enough to allow fish and other wildlife to prosper. "Friends of the Chicago River" is a great resource if anyone is interested in helping to sustain the beauty of this historical waterway. I find the history of Chicago fascinating and this video extremely well done considering it is packed with info and was only an hour long. I know that's a long while to watch a video about wastewater, but it is honestly so much more. The engineering marvels that took place then was and still is astounding. Reversing the flow of a river?! I'll bet God was like...ok... I guess you can do that, but St. Louis is going to be really pissed!

I love this video! I was glued from start to finish. GREAT host!

Fabulous video on water treatment and how it can improve our quality of life. So informative and easy to understand.

Well done! Very informative.

Excellent presentation.

Very well done video. Thanks.

Great information sharing. Thanks.

This is an excellently well done video

great job excellent explanation.

Fantastic presentation! I'm overwhelmed by the level of engineering and logistics required to build a system like this.

Very informative. Well presented and filmed.

Fascinating. Well done.

This was awesome! I could watch stuff like this about our area non stop!

I'm going to watch this again, there is a lot of information to consume. Thank you for this valuable and informative educational experience.

Very informative and educational 🎉

Thanks for a great presentation of all that hard work that is done and not ´´SEEN´´ my many of us who benefit from it ! Congratulations to you all !!

Great video and wonderful work by the metro water district!

Thank your son for the huge improvement 🙏 very informative video! I'm going to look up those detailed historical photos, so interesting, I want to learn more about historical construction

Excellent job! This is amazing! I hope there are more virtual tours in the future.

Thank you, this is great!

Thanks to you and your entire team for the production of this interesting and educative video. I am a student of Chemical Engineering and technology with a great interest in wastewater treatment . Trust me, this video means a lot to me and I am looking forward to seeing the next part. Thanks!!!!!!!

This was very well produced. Thank you!

Awesome!

Fascinating and entertaining. Well done!

I'm in the water distribution field and I love the video lots of great information that I can use,!

The best city in the world by far! set up for growth into the next century.

Really great job, thanks for making this.

Your guys have done a great job!! Saving lives!!

Very nice and well done tour and documentary of MWRD and water resources in the Chicago area.

Well presented!

Well done! Very informative.. Really great job, thanks for making this..

Great video! Very educational and Justin doesn't a great job explaining all the machines and what takes place at the facilities. The Thorton reservoir is right next to i294 / i80 going toward Indiana. Very cool to pass by it!

This is an amazing video.

This is great!!

Great video

Really enjoyed all the detail

nice job

Very well done. I used to work down the road from the McCook facility and wondered what was beyond the tunnel section entrance. Now I know...a hole. Never knew about the McCook reservoir either, as that was put in after I retired.

Did you put some reverb/echo on his voice during the tunnel tour??? :D nice touch

Oh, wow! This was super educational and fun! I had a few questions, though I'm not sure if it adds to the understanding of the process. 1. In the final settling/sedimentation tanks, is the water coming in from the top of the structure in the middle of the tank and raining down, or is it leaving the structure at the center through the entire structure; and how does the treated water from the top leave the tank (gravity, pumping, etc.) and where does it go? 2. And related, how do you guys get what I assume you'd call the "flocculent" that settles after the flocculation process out of the tank? I imagine each municipal system does it little differently, but it's so cool to understand how the water is recycled.

I recall when they begin first leg of deep Channel project on the Northwest side of Chicago. Should be interesting when the glaciers come back in another hundred thousand years.

When's part two drop?

The biggest idea I am trying to express is tunneling aqueducts from the coast, in this case the west coast of the USA inland to feed combination geothermal power and sea water desalination plants. The idea seems to be so big that no one has considered it possible but I believe it is not only possible but it is necessary. For over a century the fossil water contained in aquifers has been pumped out to feed agriculture, industry and municipal water needs. The natural water cycle cant refill fossil water deposits that were filled 10,000 years ago when the glaciers melted after the last ice age. Without refilling these aquifers there is not much of a future for the region of the United states. As a result ground levels in some areas of the San Joaquin Valley have subsided by more than 30 feet. Similar fossil water depletion is happening in other regions all around the world. TBM and tunneling technology has matured and further developments in the industry are poised to speed up the tunneling process and it's these tunnels that are the only way to move large volumes of water from the ocean inland. The water is moved inland to areas where it can be desalinated in geothermal plants producing clean water and power. In many cases the water will recharge surface reservoirs where it will be used first to make more hydro power before being released into rivers and canal systems. It's very important however to not stop tunneling at these first stops but to continue several legs until the water has traveled from the ocean under mountain ranges to interior states. Along the way water will flow down grade through tunnels and rise in geothermal loops to fill mountain top pumped hydro batteries several times before eventually recharging several major aquifers. What I am proposing is essentially reversing the flow of the Colorado River Compact. Bringing water from the coast of California first to mountaintop reservoirs then to the deserts of Nevada and Arizona and on to Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. This big idea looks past any individual city or states problems and looks at the whole and by using first principles identifies the actual problem and only solution. Thank you for your time, I would like the opportunity to explain in further detail and answer any questions

Add water plants to the river

Powering a sewage plan with poop taking recycled energy to s whole different level lol

When there are heaps of black dirt on the south side of I-55. The smell is pretty bad.

Justin Brown, perfect for this type of job💩💩💩

I watched a video about China's sewage treatment since they rebuilt many of their cities. They use wetland and plants to clean waste water. Is this a cheap, safe and efficient way?

And how much do all these government ran projects cost the people of Chicago? Judging from the city deficit it must be a lot!

Why not add more oxygen instead of air? Much more efficient.