Construction to replace the main sewer line in Cahokia Heights, a city plagued with decrepit water and sewer systems for decades, will begin later this spring.
Federal, state and local officials made the announcement on Monday, detailing the more than $5 million project that’s expected to be complete next spring.
“It's going to take some time because it took some time to create this problem, but it's a step in the right direction,” said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who helped secure $3.5 million for the project last year.
The federal funding has been funneled through the Army Corps of Engineers, which helped coordinate and plan the construction project that will replace 3.5 miles of the 12-mile pipe on the south side of town. In all, it carries about 90% of the city’s waste to a treatment plant.
Replacing the sewer line, one of a handful of projects in the Metro East suburb, is an essential step to fixing the system that’s often left residents with backed-up toilets, flooded basements and standing water in their yards, officials said.
“This is the start of what we hope will continue to grow in momentum to help solve the problems these communities have faced for decades,” said Col. Andy Pannier of the Army Corps, who added that it’s rare to have agencies from the federal, state, county and community all working toward the same goal.
The remaining construction costs will be covered by an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency grant and the city, Mayor Curtis McCall Sr. said.
The project will be completed by placing a liner inside the existing pipe to fill cracks and breaks where necessary, Pannier said. The sewer line will not need to be completely replaced. Insituform Technologies USA, a Chesterfield-firm that specializes in pipe lining, will do the construction.
This process will mean minimal impact on the city’s residents, McCall and Pannier said.
“We'll be able to just target the areas we need to,” Pannier said.
Exactly when the construction will begin this spring is unclear, however. The contractor needs to study the pipeline before making specific determinations on where to begin, Pannier said.
Another effort, funded by the nearly $10 million grant from the IEPA, to replace 35 of the city’s pump stations and 22 sewer breaks started earlier this year, McCall said. So far, construction is complete on two sewer breaks and 13 pump stations.
Later this month, the city hopes to start on nine more sewer breaks. In June, construction is planned to begin on another 16 lift stations McCall said.
The timeline provided by the Illinois EPA last year said that the sewer repairs are scheduled to be complete by February 2026.
Cahokia Heights also rehabbed a 5,000-gallon water tank with $855,000 from St. Clair County’s allocation of American Rescue Plan dollars, McCall said.
Lawyers representing residents in two lawsuits against the city and its water utility provider asked the U.S. Department of Treasury late last year to investigate the county’s spending of the federal money. They allege St. Clair County’s decision to spend a vast majority of the money in white communities violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Residents, long stuck with the brunt of the city’s water problems, say that problems persist in the city, said one of the lawyers, Kalila Jackson.
“On one hand, we are happy to see progress being made,” Jackson said Monday. “But, on the other hand, there's concern about the incremental nature of the work.”
Jackson said she and residents are concerned that the 3.5-mile stretch of sewer line being repaired does not run through the parts of Cahokia Heights most devastated by the sewer problems further north in town.
The city is hoping that sewer repairs to the south will eventually help the neighborhoods to the north — and one year is a long time for those residents to wait and see, Jackson said.
Beyond that, those same residents still experience raw sewage overflows even after pump stations have been repaired, she said.
“The philosophy has been, ‘just to trust us,’” Jackson said of the city’s approach. “But when you have a community that has been overlooked in the way that this community has, it’s difficult to just accept and say ‘just trust us’ without assurances.”
As required by the Illinois EPA grant, the city must hold informational meetings to update the community. At last week’s meeting, residents questioned where the other funding promised by the state and federal government to fix the decades-long problem currently stood, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.
The delays in funding is the main reason Illinois U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, pushed for an EPA coordinator to work on Cahokia Heights, Budzinski’s office told the News-Democrat.
Budzinski said on Monday that she, Durbin and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, are still awaiting word from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a public health analysis regarding how the city’s flooding and sewage have affected residents' health.
Budzinski said the sewer line construction shows good progress.
“We are all moving in the same direction with the intended goal of making progress and getting the situation fully addressed,” Budzinski said. “So I think that's positive. We need to be making more progress. We're all committed to doing that.”
