YORKVILLE – To bring Lake Michigan water to Oswego, Montgomery and Yorkville, engineers must first plot a precise course for a pipeline to serve the three communities.
The pipeline will run from a location in Naperville in the far southwest corner of DuPage County to Oswego, then Montgomery and finally Yorkville.
The three municipalities, facing a potential water crisis as their populations continue to rise and the aquifer supplying wells continue to fall, decided more than a year ago to band together and join the DuPage Water Commission to connect with Lake Michigan.
The DWC is moving ahead with plans to select an engineering firm to get the design process started and is expected to award a contract this summer. To finance the work, each of the municipalities is placing $200,000 into an escrow account with the DWC.
The Yorkville City Council approved the agreement April 25, and the Oswego Village Board is expected to vote on the deal May 2.
“The exact cost of the engineering contract will not be known until June, when DWC approves a formal contract with a firm,” Yorkville City Administrator Bart Olson said. “The agreement provides for equal, subsequent deposits at a later date as the escrow is depleted,” Olson said.
The $600,000 in deposits into the escrow fund is expected to cover several months of engineering work.
Construction of the pipeline and supporting facilities will be a massive engineering project. Yorkville alone is expecting to pay $120,000,000 in capital costs for the work over the course of the project.
Last year, the city began what is expected to be a series of phased-in water rate increases designed to help finance the infrastructure project.
By 2030, the typical Yorkville household may be expected to pay almost $100 per month for water.
After months of investigation and deliberation, all three municipalities decided late in 2021 to connect with the DuPage system, rather than tapping into the Fox River or to use other sources to access Lake Michigan water.
The new water source is needed because the aquifer supplying the wells now used by the three communities is being depleted at a rapid pace.
The Illinois State Water Survey reports that without taking action, the three communities would be at “severe risk” of meeting water demand by 2050.
Residents in the three communities could be drawing Lake Michigan water from their taps as early as 2027 or 2028. The new pipeline will extend from Naperville to Yorkville, connecting up with Oswego and Montgomery on the way.
There is not only the pipeline itself, but construction of water storage tanks to comply with a city of Chicago requirement to have enough storage capacity for a two-day supply of water in case of supply disruptions.
The pipeline will enter Yorkville at two locations. Ground storage tanks will be constructed near the existing water tower in the Grande Reserve subdivision and close to the tower in the Raintree Village neighborhood near Yorkville Middle School.