Neighbors Weigh Floodwaters Against 239 Trees

When heavy rains hit the Northbrook East subdivision, streets sometimes flood so deeply that residents can’t drive their cars out of the garage to go to work.  Homeowners say they have spent thousands of dollars on flood-proofing their basements, but still, the water seeps in. And don’t even get them started on the problems with sewage backing up into their homes.

The fact that the village is planning to address the subdivision first among a long list of projects in seems like it should be good news. But for some residents, the detention basin village officials propose is actually nightmare. Construction of the basin requires the village to cut down many of the trees that separate homes in the neighborhood from the power lines and vacant lots between Dell Road and the Edens. Residents worry about what that would do to the view out of their rear windows—and to their property values. At a public input meeting Thursday, roughly 30 homeowners showed up to express those concerns to village officials.

“My understanding is that the aesthetics of my community, where I moved for the trees, are going to be significantly compromised because there’s now going to be a retention pond,” said resident Theresa Baker. 

The proposal in Northbrook East calls for the construction of a 1.3-million gallon detention basin and 1,478 feet of new, wider storm sewers. Engineers would build the detention basin just south of an existing basin at Longaker Road, running parallel to Dell Road in a thin band from Marshall Road to Sunset Ridge Road and adjacent to the abandoned railroad property. Village officials expect the project will cost more than $685,000 once landscaping improvements are added to the total cost.

Rainwater in the neighborhood would travel from the detention basin via an underground channel to a drainage pond by the Edens Expressway and ultimately to the Skokie Lagoons, according to Adam James, project manager with design firm Patrick Engineering Inc. The project is designed to meet the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 50-year flooding standard, meaning there is a 2 percent chance that a rain event could overflow the basin’s banks in any given year.

“You would see a dramatic decrease in the amount of residential and street flooding,” James said. If the proposed basin is built, all but a handful of homes on Whitfield Road would be protected from a 50-year-flood, according to James. Under current conditions, the streets frequently become impassable even to emergency vehicles, while 11 structures and 29 properties experience regular flooding. 

To build the basin, workers would have to cut down at least 239 trees that line the backyards of homes on Dell Road and move the bike path running on the former rail line to the east. Crews would fill the basin with native grasses and flowers and plant at least 90 trees along a fence that would be constructed adjacent to the basin. According to Village Forester Terry Cichocki, the number of trees planned for planting exceeds the number required by Northbrook’s tree preservation ordinance, which mandates that only healthy trees must be replaced. 

Despite efforts to make the basin attractive and screened from view, residents say the aesthetics just won’t be the same—and for that reason, many say the flood control project may not be it. Without significant tree cover, homeowners standing in their backyards on Dell Road will face a set of power lines running parallel to the bike tracks, and may have less protection from the noise of the Edens Expressway less than a mile away.

“Truthfully, you are changing the aesthetic value of my backyard,” said resident Dee Roberts. She wondered whether the village had considered other locations for the retention basin.

According to village engineer Paul Kendzior, the village looked at putting the basin on Cook County Forest Preserve property west of Whitfield Road, but the Forest Preserve told the village that flood control was not part of the agency’s mission. An effort to situate the detention basin on the vacant lot at 925-1000 Sunset Ridge Road also failed, because the property owner is not yet ready to develop the land, Kendzior said.

Roberts’ neighbor, Theresa Baker, wondered why the detention pond couldn’t be constructed underground. According to Kendzior, building a detention pond underground typically triples the cost of an aboveground pond—a move that would put this project over $1 million. The village chose the aboveground basin because it is the most cost-effective option, he said.

“We’re trying to address the flooding issues in the intersection as best we can,” said Public Works Director Kelly Hamill. 

When one man stood up at Thursday’s meeting and asked the residents who had gathered whether they would prefer to continue to see the streets flooded and wait for “a better solution,” more than two-thirds of the audience raised their hands. 

“There’s just no thought of that person who has to wake up every morning and see those power lines,” Roberts said. “You don’t live there. You guys are engineers—it’s black and white.” 

While the detention basin is expected to provide relief for the majority of residences in the area, some homeowners will see no change at all. Carl Cibura, a resident of Whitfield Road, said his backyard floods every year as water seeps in from the Forest Preserve land behind his house. There is a storm sewer drain behind his home, but no one maintains it, he said—and when it rains it becomes clogged with debris. 

“Between me and my neighbors on either side, we have a lake for weeks, sometimes more than a month,” Cibura told village officials. Until he replaced his basement window wells with glass block windows, his basement flooded regularly, he said. Between the new windows and the carpeting he had to tear up, Cibura estimates he has spent thousands of dollars to address the damage caused by floods. His insurance company no longer covers the cost of flood claims because he has had so many, he added. 

According to Kendzior, the project will do nothing to alleviate flooding in Cibura and his neighbors’ backyard. The drain Cibura mentioned is “grossly undersized,” Kendzior said—but is not located on village property, meaning it is not up to the village to maintain. Moreover, the Forest Preserve was not open to the village’s efforts to partner on flood control, he said. 

The project is also not a solution for homeowners who have sewage backing up into their residences, according to Kendzior. The village’s storm and wastewater management systems are separate, and this project is designed only to address storm water. However, Kendzior directed anyone with sewage issues to Northbrook’s 50/50 Overhead Sewer Conversion Program, in which the village contributes up to 50 percent of the costs to make sewer system improvements that will reduce flooding.

Plans for the Northbrook East detention basin should be finalized before Thanksgiving, and the project will likely go before the village board sometime in January, according to village officials. Homeowners have time to comment at several village board meetings before then, including the next regularly scheduled meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 29.

If the village board awards a contract to Patrick Engineering in January, the firm estimates that construction could begin in February and finish up in June.