Chicago’s rapid growth placed enormous strain on the region’s natural resources. For over a millennia Native people had cared for the land and waterways of the Great Lakes in a system that preserved both the people and the waters. Spiritual traditions and scientific knowledge taught Indigenous people not to foul the waters one drank from, or to pollute with human excreta the rivers in which community members bathed. Instead, Native people constructed refuse pits and latrines to ensure the purity of Lake Michigan’s waters.
Anglo-Americans did things differently. They viewed rivers as open-air sewers, something that revolted the Native people, who had long viewed Euro-Americans as a pretty disgusting lot. When white Americans began settling around Lake Michigan, they continued to display what Native peoples considered poor personal hygiene and to engage in practices that polluted local rivers. They also faced a number of geographical and topographical challenges to changing their waste management. Most obviously, the city was built on thick clayey soil, a monotonously flat topography, and uncooperative river currents. As Chicago’s population grew, local rivers and streams filled with human feces, while lakes abounded with the rotting carcasses of dead animals. Devastating cholera, typhoid, and diarrhea outbreaks were the result.
To solve the problem, officials and engineers turned to the idea of “self-purification.” This term refers to the natural process of rivers cleansing impurities from their ecosystems. As a rule, rivers with a dissolved oxygen level below 5mg/L tend to decline in health, and species die. At the end of the nineteenth century, Edwin Oakes Jordan, a University of Chicago scientists and advocate of the Drainage Canal, insisted that self-purification would help Chicago solve its waste problem and improve public health. In a series of studies, Jordan asserted that no significant levels of pollution were detected in water redirecting downstream.
So the engineers and officials agreed to fix Chicago’s waste problem with a progressive engineering feat. A 28-mile canal, or “conduit,” would connect the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River. Instead of the Chicago River emptying into Lake Michigan, pumping stations would funnel water from Lake Michigan through the canal, thereby flushing Chicago’s waste down river and toward the Des Plaines and Mississippi Rivers. To the engineers and scientists who promoted this plan, the success of the Drainage Canal rested on the idea of Progressive Era science giving riverine “self-purification” a helping hand.