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(Above) Area along Chicago Riverwalk affected on Saturday, from east of Michigan Avenue to halfway between Columbus Drive and Lake Shore Drive.

Riverwalk visitors tiptoe through sewage

23-Aug-16 – Hopefully, you were not walking through mud on the Chicago Riverwalk east of Michigan Avenue on Saturday morning because, well, it was not mud.

Sewage came up from a manhole and streamed through an area where tourists board Chicago’s First Lady for architectural tours. It flowed east to a drain behind dumpsters below Lower Wacker Drive.

Photo by Jyoti Srivastava (Left) Boarding area for Chicago’s First Lady on Riverwalk east of Michigan Avenue. Photo by Jyoti Srivastava.

“It smelled to high heaven,” recalled David Sudler, who lives at Columbus Plaza on Upper Wacker Drive.

When he got to the Riverwalk at about 10 a.m. on Saturday, four hours after the sewage appeared, Sudler saw people “doing the toptoe dance” on their way to the Chicago Air & Water Show – including people pushing strollers and people wearing sandals.

After calling a couple of City of Chicago departments, Sudler got a shovel, wheelbarrow, and garden hose and started cleaning. Later that afternoon, Chicago’s First Lady had the area pressure washed.

Sudler believes plugged storm drains are to blame. He estimates 80 percent of drains below Lower Wacker Drive are plugged.

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago concurs. According to spokesperson Allison Fore, “the probable cause of anything that washed up on the Riverwalk is the storm water system that discharges directly into the Chicago River.”