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This year, Chicago breaks ground on a pipeline that will bring water from the Great Lakes to some suburbs whose groundwater is running dry.
Since 2015, Joliet has been in a race to overhaul the area’s water infrastructure at a cost of more than $2 billion, most of that paying for a roughly 62-mile network of new pipes and pump stations that will carry drinking water from Chicago’s purification plants to Joliet and five neighboring communities.
Construction begins in June, according to Chicago’s Department of Water Management, and is expected to be complete in 2030, right when Joliet’s wells may start to run dry. Some see a model for regional cooperation in a warmer world where water is more scarce, but the project has also renewed anxiety about the future of the Great Lakes.
Here & Now’s Chris Bentley reports.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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