US Army Corps of Engineers National Great RIvers Museum at the Melvin Price Locks and Dam

The Illinois River enters the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis. In 1900, the City of Chicago reversed the Chicago River, constructing a canal that flushed all of that city’s untreated sewage into the Illinois River. The solution to one city’s problem—stench and waterborne disease—was solved by shifting the problems downstream to the ecology […]