Word: districts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...more modest level, the district is annexing land in Chicago suburbs to build small flood basins. These will only begin use about 20 days a year, Bacon says, and can be used for playgrounds the rest of the year. The project raises an eerie image of a little league game, postponed because the diamond is under 15 feet of water...
...district's difficulties yield to the dramatic plan approach so easily. Even the most efficient treatment plant faces the problem of "sludge disposal"--what to do with the stuff that is taken out of sewage being treated. The conventional approach has been to deposit the good in what are euphemistically called "sanitary lagoons,"but these are understandably unpopular with the lucky ones who live nearby...
...district has been turning its sludge into fertilizer, but the manure demand is declining and this is a losing business to the tune of $45 a ton. And a system of underwater burning which will be installed soon is hideously expensive. The district is buying up farmlands in rural Illinois where they may ship the sludge as land fill, though some trustees think that even talking about this kind of solution frightens residents and makes the problem worse...
Even more serious than the sludge dilemma is Bacon's inability to clean any doorsteps except his own. He points with great pride to the district's record of not adding a drop of pollution in recent years to Lake Michigan, but ten blocks above the district's northern border sits a treatment plant which daily dumps half-cleaned sewage into the lake. And in Gary, Indiana the huge U.S. Steel plant continues to empty its industrial wastes. U.S. Steel has been ordered to stop by the end of 1968, but Bacon doesn't think the date can stand...
Still the city fought for its life. Writing off fashionable Laurel Park's $50,000 homes because the area is lower than the arroyo lip, Harlingen took its stand in the central district, sandbagging dikes across streets wherever crews could find relatively high ground. Bulldozers gouged a 10-ft.-high earth embankment across one stretch, sacrificing the airport to save the city's core. Water mains burst and sewers backed up, spurting like geysers, as exhausted workers clung to the defense perimeter. Armed guards battled diamondback rattlesnakes as plentiful as worms after rain. Bushes turned black with water...