La Grange's Street Flooding? Here To Stay, Official Says

LA GRANGE, IL – If you don't like streets flooding during rainstorms in La Grange, you're going to have to get used to it.

That was the message from Village Trustee Glenn Thompson at Monday's Village Board meeting.

"I know it's not popular, but our streets will always be a part of our flood control," he said. "There is no way we can ever rebuild or fix our system so that our streets will not act as part of our sewer program."

The reason is that the village long ago built combination sanitary and storm sewers, he said. Changing that system, he said, would result in every road and driveway being dug up.

"The cost of that project would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars. And it would take many years of construction," Thompson said. "It is impossible for a village with a budget of $46 million a year, 16,000 residents and 5,700 homes to ever come up with a plan to do that on our own."