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The sewage drained into the river, which drained into the lake, which was where they got their fresh water, so they built a new river to reverse the original on
by hwillis 9y ago
The sewage drained into the river, which drained into the lake, which was where they got their fresh water, so they built a new river to reverse the original one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sanitary_and_Ship_Cana...
It's kind of amazing that such a poorly-formed plan didn't go catastrophically wrong, but it's worked okay for over a century.
- flomo 9y agoInteresting. Clicking around from that link and found that the famous Chicago cholera outbreak was a myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_1885_cholera_epidemic_...
- hwillis 9y agoalthough for the record that one is not the same as the one that killed 6% of the population, which happened in 1854.