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

This is a video version of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago's virtual tour.
Travel back in time to early Chicago to see how we reversed the Chicago River and developed wastewater treatment technology. Go behind the scenes and under water to see how we transform the water you use every day; descend 300 feet into the deep tunnel system, and watch our electrofishing crew at work sampling fish on the Chicago River.
To see FAQs and sign up for a live virtual tour: mwrd.org/facility-and-virtual...
For more information: mwrd.org/
Index
Early Chicago 2:30
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Chicago Area Waterway System Construction 8:21
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Glass Plate Historical Photos 11:05
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Overview of Chicago Area Waterway System 13:49
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Developing Wastewater Treatment Technology 17:49
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Wastewater Treatment Process 20:48
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Dancing Water Bear 😊 35:07
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (Deep Tunnel) 40:26
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Fossils 51:47
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Water Quality Monitoring 53:19
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Electrofishing 54:14
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Stormwater Management and Green Infrastructure 55:36
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Employment 58:46
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
MWRD Board of Commissioners 59:13
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
Water Treatment Demonstration (what happened to the water in the cup) 59:56
• MWRD Virtual Tour: Dee...
#WastewaterTreatment
#ChicagoRiver
#DeepTunnel
#ChicagoHistory
#StormwaterManagement
#FloodControl
#WaterBear
#TARP
#Infrastructure
#Engineering
#GreenInfrastructure

[@unfoldtv905]

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

[@carlderfler5006]

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???

[@djwaz855]

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

[@brandonroth3072]

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!

[@fredwalker9867]

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

[@justaguyfromreddit]

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

[@pokeyrunner8]

The dancing bear is pretty awesome.

[@jfro7182]

Dancing water bear vs. disco chicken…..let’s do this.

[@gabrielfelixmunoz739]

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

[@nicholasreback1394]

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

[@creativeimage2]

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

[@dyu007]

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.

[@SueMarkgrafGreenMarkPR]

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

[@bixby246]

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!

[@RudyS-sx7rt]

Excellent presentation.

[@phitchr]

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

[@johnbeyer2978]

Well done! Very informative.

[@JimCTSCLO]

Great information sharing. Thanks.

[@eric13hill]

Very well done video. Thanks.

[@CamInglis]

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

[@muskietime]

Very informative. Well presented and filmed.

[@JoseSanchez-jp5ft]

Fascinating. Well done.

[@repairdrive]

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

[@cosmicphoto05]

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

[@MicheleBoechemakes]

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

[@zijiechen3846]

Very informative and educational 🎉

[@jimobrien84]

This is an excellently well done video

[@bobenright9449]

great job excellent explanation.

[@cynthiameyers2104]

Thank you, this is great!

[@amberd9984]

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

[@federicofigueroa9669]

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 !!

[@dhuyvaert]

Great video and wonderful work by the metro water district!

[@insanisstultitia3119]

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

[@JoeAlongi70]

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

[@spartoliberia3139]

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!!!!!!!

[@Raptorman0909]

Truly a great video that coves so much ground in an hour. The presenter is a great choice given a demeanor that informs with a tad of humor -- certainly preferable over a stuffed shirt. The amount of work required to properly treat the wastewater of a large city is pretty staggering and it goes to show just where you tax dollars are going.

[@wkelleh2]

This was very well produced. Thank you!

[@elliotn28]

Fascinating and entertaining. Well done!

[@user-wr8ew7xy4f]

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

[@acox60]

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

[@Innerbrave]

Really great job, thanks for making this.

[@isaiahlf5546]

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

[@jakeketchum1398]

Awesome!

[@chrisingle5839]

Well presented!

[@tkasiiuniia265]

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!

[@bigdguitars]

This is an amazing video.

[@actionarchitects8199]

This is great!!

[@DavidElzeitsinfill]

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

[@elizabethschraft3552]

Really enjoyed all the detail

[@jimdavy5751]

Great video

[@chuckspringer1937]

nice job

[@dennisf7086]

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.

[@nomdeplume8355]

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.

[@mwrdgc]

Thank you for watching and for the good questions! Water flows into the final tanks in center of the tank. The actual opening of the pipe flowing into a final tank is underwater, so no - it doesn't rain down. Since we're tying to keep the water nice and still so the solids can settle at this stage it would be counterproductive to have it churning around any more than it has to. There's a circular baffle around where the water enters that helps slow it down a bit; that's the "structure" referred to in the video. The water just flows under this baffle, which only extends a few feet underwater. The water leaves the tank by overflowing into a channel kind of like a circular gutter. The solids that settle in final tanks are scraped out an opening in the bottom of the tank by a scraper that continuously slowly rotates around the tank. If you do an image search for "final settling tank" you may be able to find some images that show all of this - it is a bit tricky to describe verbally.

[@dominiquemckoy7515]

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

[@mwrdgc]

Yes, thank you for noticing that! Just a little reverb. The actual reverb in the tunnels is much more extreme. Unfortunately in the tunnels under construction there's generally lots of background noise so it's hard to appreciate.

[@eddieporrata5915]

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.

[@mhmdnazel1]

Add water plants to the river

[@peternickeas4048]

When's part two drop?

[@trueword247]

i see what you did there

[@AB-KB8]

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

[@dyu007]

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

[@JohnR.1968]

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

[@dyu007]

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?

[@MarkWilliam-pl6qs]

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

[@mwrdgc]

As an independent government agency, our budget is separate from the City of Chicago's. Our treatment operations use less energy and cost less per household than national and regional averages. For detailed info about our budget, see: mwrd.org/what-we-do/budget

[@trueword247]

It actually "costs" the people of Cook county as MWRD serves all of Cook County and parts of Will and DuPage counties. However, having seen the budget of MWRD and having knowledge of it's ratings as a government bond agency, I can say that a dollar spent on MWRD is one of the best tax investments a taxpayer can make.

[@LudwiGerado]

This is an amazing, well done video!! Curious if it is any research or plan to reduce odor coming from Stickney Plan.

[@JC-eu5el]

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

[@mwrdgc]

Good question! Using pure oxygen could be a chemically efficient way to oxygenate water but it is much more expensive - air is free, hard to beat that price. Also oxygen is potentially very hazardous and requires special handling.

[@user-hm2gb6pm6b]

Pittsburg water wheels Pittsburgh water wheels Pittsburgh water wheels Chikamangalore Tunnel system Limestone blasted Chicago Chicago Roosevelt Roosevelt Roosevelt Drainage 1820 Nutrient removal of urea Water flows by gravity City sewer system Intakes canals Propeller Hydraulic propellers Pneumatic pumps Watershed mississipi Ssipi ssipi Ssipi Gulf of mexico Gulf of mexico Gulf of mexico Bay 1889 Protect the lake from pollution Pittsburgh intake canal Rocks exploded on its own ? Mountains exploded on its own accord Hindusthan vitreous Hindusthan vitreous Hindusthan vitreous 1896 Not many horses existed in 1960 ... Downtown LA downtown Confluence Confluence Influence Western avenue Lift pumps Aeration Powerhouse Hydroelectric power Illinois Barges To deliver cargo and materials Smaller carbon footprint 200000 population Water quality deteriorated due to pollution CPC Creeks Mangroves 1917 Intercepting sewers Individual municipality corporates 1.5 billion gallons per day treated Sewage Turbid Suspended solids 80 % Removal without chemical treatment 45 ft underground Preliminary Screens Coarse Fine Storm drains Acoustic enclosures Blowers to pump water Grit sand and gravel removed from pumps Fats oils and greese scrapped out Primary treatment .....removes 70 % .... Secondary Aeration tanks Settling tanks Dissolved oxygen to assist bacteria to degrade BOD Suspended Dissolved solids Pathogens Aerobic degradation Anaerobic bacteria ..... Microbiology laboratory Assist in flocculation in settling tanks 95% bacteria settles down Pvc pipes Opaque.. Rigourous laboratory Ecoli Microbes Bacteria Nutrient removal by microorganism .... Flagella Amoebas May be lacking Cilia ..... eyelash ....feed on bacteria ...... Food web of microorganism............ Removes ......nutrients from waste water Sensitive to ammonia ....... Final settling tanks Water enters from aeration tank ...... Hindusthan vitreous Hindusthan vitreous Hindusthan vitreous