I always wanted to see this quarry. There was so much flooding back in the 90s in Bensenville, Wood Dale, Elmhurst, and Addison. It was horrible to go out in the morning and find my car in water up to the dashboard. The people that said you'd never fill the quarry obviously didn't live in the area.
My family lived in Elmhurst during the flood. We were using canoes instead of cars. Fascinating story about the quarry. I never knew the extent of the magnitude of the amount of water it can divert and hold. I love that it goes right back into the creek. Fascinating. Thank you!
Oh hey! I actually installed new Risers years ago, the pipes you see at 2:23. That was a fun job, we had to wait like 2 weeks for them to re-dig and compact a roadway for the crane to get down there, and we did everything from a basket suspended from the crane.
This system is simple and effective. It’s really nice to see the motorized actuators an old coworker and I installed on those gates about 12 years ago are still working perfectly! Now you guys need to show what the City of Elmhurst is doing to combat flooding for the city itself. It’s an amazing system also!
That’s pretty cool I grew up there till 85. Interesting to see what the area looks like now and how it’s used. Totally remember salty creek and riding our bikes all around back then. Blast from the past.
Hauled stone out of there back in the 60s and 70's. Used to use electric shovels to load the rip rap on to quarry trucks. When they were obsolete they were parked along the fence by route 83
I think I remember walking past them when we visited my grandparents in the late 80’s/very early 90’s. They used to live on Highland, they even had a rock from the quarry go through their porch when they were still blasting.
I remember some flooding in Elmhurst back in the late 80s. We lived on Mitchell Ave, I believe, and everyone around us got completely flooded out. Only reason why we had no damage was there was no basement or crawl space and the foundation was raised higher than the rest of the property.
This is very interesting, especially the flood numbers at the end, 1,600cfs, 720,000 gallons per minute being siphoned off into the quarry.This past weekend, Hurricane Helene went through Erwin, Tennessee! The Nolichucky River flooded and ripped through Erwin at a rate of 1.3 million gallons per “second”! Niagara Falls flows at 720,000 gallons per second!
What did they do 25 or 50 years ago? Some of the answers are the roads were not as wide, the parking lots at businesses were not as numerous and people who now live in the area and have paved driveways and streets in developments all add to the dispersal problem. This is really good thinking. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Every square foot of asphalt means something. Something has occurred to me regarding that quarry . In the state where I live something like that once it is not any longer useful for its intended purpose it has to be recontoured to match the topography in the area and it also needs to be planted with vegetation including trees obviously seedlings. Selling or giving that quarry to Elmhurst as a stormwater retention pond eliminates recontouring anything and if that’s the case that was really good thinking. I deal with some mining operations and quarrying in a different state and it could easily cost a couple million dollars to remediate that quarry and recontour it. Perhaps in Illinois they do not have those requirements.
A while ago it was a granite mine. Before that is was a limestone quarry, of course. They would blast dynamite at 3 o clock sharp. However the company that operated it was found to be digging illegally under the town, rumors say it went to the asphalt plant. But a fire took place in the granite mine and made it dangerous to go down. It was abandoned due to the high cost of reopening it. And in 1992 it was founded as a flood control system, and still is to this day. Keep in mind this is what I heard from my father who lived since the 80's in here
I wonder how long it takes to pump it all back out and how much it costs? I saw the entire quarry filled to the brim some years back! Awesome facility!
I lived in Elmhurst in the ‘80’s. Greater Chicagoland was the flattest place I ever lived (and I grew up in Kansas). When there was a flood, almost every home would get some flood damage, not just the low lying areas, because it was all one giant low lying area. Looks like the old quarry is saving some home owners big headaches.
Rochester, NY had a deep tunnel project around that same time (35-40 years back) and it's now our excess stormwater storage system. Totally agreed that more cities need this!!
A brilliant idea taking a quarry that been mined of anything of value for building materials or minerals and reusing it as flood control instead of filling it in or making it a dump/landfill.
The City of Elmhurst itself has come a long way with improving the flood control for its residents. This is the County’s system. The city has a much more complex system and it’s super cool.
Simply because the geography is different. While the Addicks Reservoir in conjunction Barker Reservoir prevent downstream flooding of downtown Houston, the megalopolis itself is only at 0-15 feet above sea level. Furthermore, the water table is only a few feet deep.
Before we built thousands of homes in the area, the water would flood a wetland, which would gradually release it harmlessly. This quarry serves that purpose.
Marry Christmas to the quarry owner. I wonder how many bribes it took for them to develop this into actual system. Great use case with out having to restore the land
I wouldn't compare a flood facility to insurance; generally speaking you don't have to sue your flood facility to get them to do their job after evading you with nonsense for 3-6 months.
Be interesting to know how much erosion happens on those cliff faces each time its filled an emptied , probably also a reason its so green is cause of the water content in the ground
720,000 is not enough. And you filled it 7 times. We have too much cement and not enough material green spaces to soak it up. This will only get worst. I live near the Melvina TaRP and they just expanded the capacity of it. The house nearby would flood when it will, and water would blast out of the sewers like a fountain
The one in McCook is getting expanded to handle 10 billion gallons as we speak, and should be complete in 2029. They're two more big ones in Thornton(8 billion) and Elk Grove(3.5 billion).
I like the shot where theres just houses and a street and then a 100 foot tall limestone(?) cliff where they shoot water into that seems so dangerous to me 😭
Regardless of this flood control system, I keep the kids close to me around salt creek no matter the weather. There are many points in the forest preserves where anyone could fall in. I'm Uncle Patrick and I always stay close to my niece and nephew for the purpose of protecting them.
@@Thefutureooksbight Just so you know, the hole thing is guarded by fences and other guardrails. and where the school I go to no one has brought up the quarry for years. And im pretty sure no one has fallen into or died by the quarry to my knowledge.
@@wannasaka that’s good news but I’m a child of the 60s and 70s fences never kept us out of trouble trouble we live next to a forest preserve we had tree houses 60 feet or so up in the air I fell from one 10 feet up broke my ankle
Maybe don't let them do it from their laptop at home anymore that sounds ridiculous yup Russians definitely got y'alls by the nuts. Good thing it's non critical! 😮
I always wanted to see this quarry. There was so much flooding back in the 90s in Bensenville, Wood Dale, Elmhurst, and Addison. It was horrible to go out in the morning and find my car in water up to the dashboard. The people that said you'd never fill the quarry obviously didn't live in the area.
It dosent get filled more then halfway usually, but sometimes I have seen it full.
My family lived in Elmhurst during the flood. We were using canoes instead of cars. Fascinating story about the quarry. I never knew the extent of the magnitude of the amount of water it can divert and hold. I love that it goes right back into the creek. Fascinating. Thank you!
Living near this quarry and having gone on a tour, it is very impressive. Highly recommend the tour of my home town quarry!
Nice job I saw this huge hole for years now doing a great job keeping property's dry in heavy bad weather year long 👍
Oh hey! I actually installed new Risers years ago, the pipes you see at 2:23.
That was a fun job, we had to wait like 2 weeks for them to re-dig and compact a roadway for the crane to get down there, and we did everything from a basket suspended from the crane.
Kranplatz verdichtet sein! 😂
Yeah infrastructure!🙌
This system is simple and effective. It’s really nice to see the motorized actuators an old coworker and I installed on those gates about 12 years ago are still working perfectly! Now you guys need to show what the City of Elmhurst is doing to combat flooding for the city itself. It’s an amazing system also!
This was awesome! Move videos like this please 👍🏾
That’s pretty cool I grew up there till 85. Interesting to see what the area looks like now and how it’s used. Totally remember salty creek and riding our bikes all around back then. Blast from the past.
Hauled stone out of there back in the 60s and 70's. Used to use electric shovels to load the rip rap on to quarry trucks. When they were obsolete they were parked along the fence by route 83
I think I remember walking past them when we visited my grandparents in the late 80’s/very early 90’s. They used to live on Highland, they even had a rock from the quarry go through their porch when they were still blasting.
I remember seeing that as a boy. I rode with my father in his mixer, great memories.
I remember some flooding in Elmhurst back in the late 80s. We lived on Mitchell Ave, I believe, and everyone around us got completely flooded out. Only reason why we had no damage was there was no basement or crawl space and the foundation was raised higher than the rest of the property.
This has probably saved citizens millions in damages. Thank you so much for this!
Change the 'm' to a 'b'.
This is very interesting, especially the flood numbers at the end, 1,600cfs, 720,000 gallons per minute being siphoned off into the quarry.This past weekend, Hurricane Helene went through Erwin, Tennessee! The Nolichucky River flooded and ripped through Erwin at a rate of 1.3 million gallons per “second”! Niagara Falls flows at 720,000 gallons per second!
Very nice piece. Thanks.
Crazy, lived around this area for all my life. And we knew this existed. But makes a lot of sense why we never flooded!!
I used to ride by the quarry on my bike when heading over to Al’s hobby shop.. had to be early 1990’s.
That's some great ingenuity
They should turn that vortex in to an electrical generator
Since the rain events only happen once or twice a year, the cost wouldn’t make sense
What did they do 25 or 50 years ago? Some of the answers are the roads were not as wide, the parking lots at businesses were not as numerous and people who now live in the area and have paved driveways and streets in developments all add to the dispersal problem. This is really good thinking. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Every square foot of asphalt means something.
Something has occurred to me regarding that quarry . In the state where I live something like that once it is not any longer useful for its intended purpose it has to be recontoured to match the topography in the area and it also needs to be planted with vegetation including trees obviously seedlings. Selling or giving that quarry to Elmhurst as a stormwater retention pond eliminates recontouring anything and if that’s the case that was really good thinking. I deal with some mining operations and quarrying in a different state and it could easily cost a couple million dollars to remediate that quarry and recontour it. Perhaps in Illinois they do not have those requirements.
And us teenagers used some old quarries for swimming holes.
@@jerroldkazynski5480 We did that out near Rockford in the 70s. I have no idea if they ever recovered all of the bodies.
@@stringlarson1247 our go-to was in Lemont and another near Elmhurst. Des Plaines River area.
A while ago it was a granite mine. Before that is was a limestone quarry, of course. They would blast dynamite at 3 o clock sharp. However the company that operated it was found to be digging illegally under the town, rumors say it went to the asphalt plant. But a fire took place in the granite mine and made it dangerous to go down. It was abandoned due to the high cost of reopening it. And in 1992 it was founded as a flood control system, and still is to this day. Keep in mind this is what I heard from my father who lived since the 80's in here
50 years ago the water just came into our basements.
Thank you. I had wondered how the project fared after its completion. I see "it's worked as planned, designed, and executed."
what a great tool to have to help control flooding
Cool thanks
Very cool❤❤
That sure would of help me in 1987. Flooding blew out a basement window and it was game over man!
I wonder how long it takes to pump it all back out and how much it costs? I saw the entire quarry filled to the brim some years back! Awesome facility!
Sounds extremely costly to pump all that water they should put an outlet that flows further down stream
Seems to not be that expensive, they bought new pumps a while ago and and waiting to get installed.
I lived in Elmhurst in the ‘80’s. Greater Chicagoland was the flattest place I ever lived (and I grew up in Kansas). When there was a flood, almost every home would get some flood damage, not just the low lying areas, because it was all one giant low lying area. Looks like the old quarry is saving some home owners big headaches.
Way cool. The quarry was a playground in the 70s.
This is a benefit of the deep tunnel project started 40 years ago. Other cities need to do the same.
Rochester, NY had a deep tunnel project around that same time (35-40 years back) and it's now our excess stormwater storage system. Totally agreed that more cities need this!!
Milwaukee has a deep tunnel that stores rain water stopped sewage that used to be diverted into lake Michigan
More of these flood control areas need to be built.
THORNTON IS STILL #1🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
this is super interesting!
Worked nearby for 15 years and didn't know this was here!
A brilliant idea taking a quarry that been mined of anything of value for building materials or minerals and reusing it as flood control instead of filling it in or making it a dump/landfill.
Nice share TY
This is really cool! The water looks disgusting :)
Quite fascinating actually
Fascinating
We live on a giant wetland!
The City of Elmhurst itself has come a long way with improving the flood control for its residents. This is the County’s system. The city has a much more complex system and it’s super cool.
I would much rather live on wetlands than dry lands, because I would take water management over fire management any day
pointy flats are for a different breed
Imagine how much electricity the vortex could create with a turbine.
This is a well spent tax
We take this infrastructure for granted.
S o why isn’t this done in Houston,Texas?
Simply because the geography is different. While the Addicks Reservoir in conjunction Barker Reservoir prevent downstream flooding of downtown Houston, the megalopolis itself is only at 0-15 feet above sea level. Furthermore, the water table is only a few feet deep.
@@fredturd exactly what I was going to say!
Mostly because Houston already sits below sea level.
@@jamesonmahoney not below but now enough to build a quarry that’s what I meant to say
Before we built thousands of homes in the area, the water would flood a wetland, which would gradually release it harmlessly. This quarry serves that purpose.
Looks like it might need to expand
Cool
Some things were done right with Chicago and Cook County.
Marry Christmas to the quarry owner. I wonder how many bribes it took for them to develop this into actual system. Great use case with out having to restore the land
I wouldn't compare a flood facility to insurance; generally speaking you don't have to sue your flood facility to get them to do their job after evading you with nonsense for 3-6 months.
Be interesting to know how much erosion happens on those cliff faces each time its filled an emptied , probably also a reason its so green is cause of the water content in the ground
The quarry was stabilized and sealed with concrete to prevent water from leaking into ground water.
@@raybod1775Where did you hear that?🙏❤😊
I’ve been passing this place for 15 years w fireworks
720,000 is not enough. And you filled it 7 times. We have too much cement and not enough material green spaces to soak it up. This will only get worst. I live near the Melvina TaRP and they just expanded the capacity of it. The house nearby would flood when it will, and water would blast out of the sewers like a fountain
The one in McCook is getting expanded to handle 10 billion gallons as we speak, and should be complete in 2029. They're two more big ones in Thornton(8 billion) and Elk Grove(3.5 billion).
@@AnX8765 The capacity ive heard is about 3 billion, also having no quarry would be worse, the flooding back in 90's was terrible
Gives me creeps. I don’t like heights.
I like the shot where theres just houses and a street and then a 100 foot tall limestone(?) cliff where they shoot water into that seems so dangerous to me 😭
@@connor5136 I’d be a little worried raising kids around there
Regardless of this flood control system, I keep the kids close to me around salt creek no matter the weather. There are many points in the forest preserves where anyone could fall in. I'm Uncle Patrick and I always stay close to my niece and nephew for the purpose of protecting them.
@@Thefutureooksbight Just so you know, the hole thing is guarded by fences and other guardrails. and where the school I go to no one has brought up the quarry for years. And im pretty sure no one has fallen into or died by the quarry to my knowledge.
@@wannasaka that’s good news but I’m a child of the 60s and 70s fences never kept us out of trouble trouble we live next to a forest preserve we had tree houses 60 feet or so up in the air I fell from one 10 feet up broke my ankle
Do fish get sucked in? Has a person ever fallen in?
Fish? Salt creek? 😅
@rod...Yes they do. There's a concrete stairway to help aerated the water before it enters the creek. This also helps the fish. 🙏❤😊
some bad math
now put a generator on that water so it makes power
would make sense so they wont do it!
@Robert..Not cost effective. 🙏❤😊
678
This is an excellent use of tax dollars!
“They can actually do it from home on their laptop”. - until their is no power due to the flooding and it doesn’t work
People with critical infrastructure jobs have backups for everything. Most likely home generators and satellite backup internet connection.
@@CensorCipher The backups have backups.
Maybe don't let them do it from their laptop at home anymore that sounds ridiculous yup Russians definitely got y'alls by the nuts. Good thing it's non critical! 😮
No dams , no flooding. Pretty simple.
Garden state?