New water reservoir likely option in Forest Park
Forest Park commissioners may be one step closer to deciding what to do with the Jackson Boulevard water reservoir underneath the Howard Mohr Community Center.
At the March 10 village council meeting, Christopher B. Burke Engineering, the village’s engineering firm, gave a presentation on two potential locations to build new water reservoirs in Forest Park.
The presentation follows a village council meeting last February, where commissioners said they were leaning toward building new reservoirs – two million-gallon tanks either on village-owned Altenheim land or the CTA Blue Line parking lot. In the fall, commissioners authorized Burke Engineering to do a feasibility study for those two locations.
“A new site is the preferred option,” said James Amelio, group lead at Burke Engineering, during the March 10 presentation.
Underneath the Howard Mohr Community Center, a one-million-gallon reservoir holds potable water for the entire village. Constructed in the 1960s, the reservoir is nearing the end of its 75-year lifespan.
In 2023, a routine inspection of the reservoir showed deterioration. So, the reservoir was drained, and a structural engineer determined that the ceiling’s concrete and reinforcement bars needed repairs. That November, the village put up emergency shoring, restricted access to the community center playground above the reservoir and installed monitoring devices to regularly check for cracks in the reservoir.
Rehabbing the existing reservoir on Jackson Boulevard is cheaper than building a new one, estimated to cost about $3 million for repairs and $750,000 for the neighboring pump station’s required renovations over the next five years.
But a rehabbed reservoir would only last 25 years, compared to a new build’s 75 years. And during construction, the village would need to find a new site to hold 1 million gallons of water – an amount that’s already below what the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency suggests in its guidelines.
The IEPA recommends municipalities store twice the amount of water used daily, which is about 1.5 million gallons for Forest Park. Though a water reservoir on Hannah Avenue holds 350,000 gallons, the village would be short on water if there were an emergency while the Jackson Boulevard reservoir was out of commission.
“You would have to lean more heavily upon your neighbors in the event of some sort of pipe failure, where you need that additional storage,” Amelio said of relying on surrounding municipalities.
Altenheim or CTA Blue Line lot?
If the village chooses to build new water reservoirs, they can do it on one of two village-owned properties: The Altenheim or the CTA Blue Line parking lot.
New reservoirs would take longer to build than a rehab and cost over $10 million. But they also have several potential pros.
Construction workers would have more room and better access at both the Altenheim and the CTA lot than they would at the community center, where they would need to repair the reservoir between the building and the railroad tracks.
“The biggest thing is access to construct it and then access in the future for maintenance and parking,” Amelio said.
The new reservoirs would cover somewhere between 1.25 acres and 1.5 acres and include two one-million-gallon tanks, plus a pump station.
Such infrastructure at the CTA parking lot would cover the east part of the property, where there is easy access to water supply lines.
But soil around the CTA Blue Line parking lot would likely need remediation, presenting an additional cost. And the village would lose parking revenue if they built at this location. Amelio said it would also be more difficult to conceal reservoirs at the CTA lot than it would at the Altenheim.
“It’d be a pretty significant visual impact,” Amelio said.
If the new reservoirs end up at the Altenheim, the tanks would likely be in the property’s southeast corner. Forest Park Public Works already has a small storage area at the south end of the Altenheim, a plus for this location, along with space for storage of materials.
The Altenheim has easy access to existing water mains that run along Van Buren Street. There’s also the opportunity to shield the reservoirs with landscaping.
“We’re already talking about ways to minimize its impact and maximize the functionality for the village,” Commissioner Michelle Melin-Rogovin said of the Altenheim property. “So, all those things are things that I’m leaning toward.”
But development on the Altenheim would also bring a potential loss of development revenue for a chunk of land that the village has been sitting on for decades.
“I would like to have some kind of discussion with the village administrator and the rest of the council on how much putting this on the Altenheim would affect future development,” Commissioner Maria Maxham said. “How we’re going to use the space, how we’re going to sell part of that, needs to be a central issue when we start talking about this and making a decision.”
Funding and next steps
Funding for the construction of new reservoirs could come from an IEPA low-interest loan, while renovating the existing reservoir would likely be paid for by the village.
Village Administrator Rachell Entler said the United States Army Corp of Engineers’ Water Resources Development Act could also provide potential funding for a new build. It could give the village up to $15 million through U.S. Rep. Danny Davis’s office. Entler said officials have met with both the Army Corp. and Davis’s office.
“I can’t really speak to how likely it is that we would be funded by the WRDA. But I can tell you that we are doing the work behind increasing our chances to get that,” Entler said. “Congressman Davis’ office has reached out to us to help us with that. That, in and of itself, speaks volumes to the interest.”
But, Entler added that the WRDA is looking for design-ready projects, so the village would need to be ready for potential construction if given that funding.
“If the council wants to have those conversations as to how that portion of the Altenheim will be affected by [the reservoirs], we need to do that sooner rather than later. There’s a little bit of immediacy,” Entler said.
Amelio said he’ll get back to the village council with how much soil remediation would cost at the CTA property, as well as additional renderings of how the reservoirs would look from different angles around the CTA property – both asks from commissioners.
Next steps will be to design the reservoirs, solicit funding from the IEPA and the WRDA concurrently, plus determine future plans for the existing pump station and reservoir at the community center.
“In order to use the playground at the community center, we’ll still have to either backfill or come up with something else,” Entler said. She said the village would need to find another use for the land and adjacent pump station if commissioners choose to construct new reservoirs.
“If we were to build again. The water reservoir at Jackson will no longer be in service,” Entler said. “You will have a piece of land that will be rendered useless because the water pumping station won’t be viable after we shut it down.”
