TITLE:
Historical Review: Long-Term Environmental and Human Health Impacts of Connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River System through the Continental Drainage Divide
AUTHORS:
Kenneth Olson
KEYWORDS:
Chicago Canals, Illinois and Michigan Canal, Illinois Waterway, Chicago River Reversal, Continental Drainage Divide
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Water Resource and Protection,
Vol.18 No.5,
May
13,
2026
ABSTRACT: Starting in 1836, three canals, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and the Calumet-Sag canal were dug across the continental drainage divide. These canals permitted navigation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the transfer of Northern Civil War soldiers and supplies to Cairo, Illinois in the 1860s. Historically, the rivers like the Illinois were used as “roads” to connect inland settlements to river and coastal ports. The primary objective is to document the environmental and human health impacts of connecting the Great Lakes Basin to the Mississippi River Basin through the Continental Drainage Divide. The Chicago and Calumet rivers and connecting canals were used for navigation and waste disposal for stockyards, meat packing plants, and other industries. A large storm in 1885 dropped high levels of precipitation in a short period of time on the city and resulted in runoff that washed untreated sewage and debris far out into Lake Michigan. This put Chicago’s drinking water supply at risk of typhoid and cholera epidemics, since the city water intakes were located only 3.2 km offshore. This paper examined policy issues, the interaction of governmental units, and economic, geographical, and technological constraints that accompanied the attempts to resolve the problem of sewage pollution control in the Chicago metropolitan area while maintaining navigation and shipping channel across the natural drainage divide. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) reversed the direction of a portion of the Chicago River in 1892, and Chicago’s sewage began to flow across the natural drainage divide and into the Illinois and Michigan Canal and away from Lake Michigan. The redirected wastewater and contaminated runoff flowed downstream into the Illinois River where pollutants could be diluted and treated naturally as waters flowed to the Mississippi River. The record flooding on the Illinois River in Spring of 2013 was a result of Chicago River reversal and heavy rainfall in the watershed which raised the pool levels behind the dams along the Illinois River. Heavy rainfall and strong winds created river currents and conditions that resulted in runaway barges that damaged the locks and dams. Many federal, state and private relief agencies responded to help assess and cleanup the damage from flooding and USACE began repairing the damaged Marseilles Dam structure in Summer of 2013. This was done to open one of the most used shipping channels in the nation. The Illinois Waterway continues to be an essential transportation corridor for moving goods across the continental drainage divide and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. This review was an attempt to learn from a historical Chicago lesson and provide recommendations for cities attempting to provide safe drinking water for their residents and to reduce the environmental and human health impacts of their waste disposal. In some cases, the waste can be moved across a drainage divide to separate it from the drinking water supply source.