Stormwater, a fancy name for rain after it hits the ground, ”is simply a resource that`s out of place,” says R.W. ”Bill” Lindley, who makes his living advising governments and developers how to prevent this resource from becoming a problem.
”Without stormwater we wouldn`t have crops, a lawn, any type of vegetation at all. We`d have a desert,” says Lindley, whose Lindley & Sons Inc. in southern Downers Grove Township specializes in drainage and stormwater management.
His new red Cadillac sports a license proclaiming his devotion to the subject: STM WTR
Flooding has been a problem in many parts of Du Page County as it was again in August in some suburbs. Lindley said the western suburbs received
”a pretty standard rain, what we should expect once or twice a year.”
He said that for the lower Salt Creek basin, a chronic flood area, ”the only solution within economic reality is to dredge and clean Salt Creek as it passes through Du Page, just to lower the energy level-nothing more, not to increase the rate (of flow).”
Lindley, 58, points out that with proper stormwater management there is no need for flood control. Flooding is defined as water inside a structure, he says. What`s outside, even if it laps at the door, is temporary inundation, and if the water is properly stored and allowed to run off at a rate that the receiving stream can handle, it won`t cause serious problems.
Though the record rains of August 1987 caused millions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses in eastern Du Page communities, there was no flood damage in places such as Naperville, where Lindley helped design a stormwater management program years ago.
Naperville Mayor Margaret P. Price and Ned Becker, the city engineer, credit Lindley with a big part in this, and he lauds them and some earlier elected officials for supplying the spirit and the ordinance that got the job done.
Price noted that Naperville was first in the county with his concept and said, ”It is truly fortunate that the former City Council had the foresight to hire Mr. Lindley and pass the ordinance we have.”
Becker said that his education and experience on his first job were based on the expensive concept of ”the bigger the pipe, the better, and not much on detention or storage” of stormwater.
But he met Lindley at a seminar shortly after coming to Naperville in 1970, and they developed a system of dual-use stormwater detention areas that has kept houses dry while those in neighboring towns have flooded, Becker said.
The system relies on storage, not gigantic and expensive pipes, and one key feature is that if there is a heavy storm the overflow is routed into yards and streets, not living rooms and basememnts, Becker said.
William J. Bauer, a noted engineer in the field who was Lindley`s boss and mentor years ago, called him ”as kind-hearted an individual as you`ll ever meet” whose work is of high quality and whose honesty is unquestioned. But Lindley ”will never tell a client just what he wants to hear” in designing a job. He will tell him what should be done to get it right, added Bauer, who was a key figure in the design of the Deep Tunnel project for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.
When he was associated with Bauer, Lindley did some work on that multibillion-dollar project, designed to help reduce stream pollution by temporarily storing stormwater.
The rapid development of the suburban area has contributed to flooding, but development can help reduce flooding if done right, said Lindley.
He explained that in 1971 he was called in by Naperville because Mayor G. Kenneth Small`s house was flooded. It was a new house, and Small wanted to know why it and neighboring homes got hit. He asked Lindley to design a way to prevent a recurrence.
”It has taken 20 years” to flood-proof Naperville, but this has succeeded ”because the community was 120 percent behind this,” Lindley said. In Elmhurst, where homes suffered severe damage in numerous storms over the same period, the community did not develop a sound stormwater management program, said Lindley. You cannot fault the officials of that time for not anticipating needs better, because standards and emphasis were different in those days, he added.
”It is the unsuitable use of flood plain and wetland properties that has resulted in certain communities becoming major victims of the August 1987 rainfall event,” Lindley said. ”Once a well-designed and adequate stormwater management program is provided, the rainfall excess, or stormwater, from that area will never again represent a threat to the public downstream.”
He explained: ”The channels and streams in northeastern Illinois have a capacity to convey water at an average of 0.1 cubic feet a second per acre drained.” But on Salt Creek, a prime flooding source in the western suburbs, some sections can convey .25 c.f.s., others only .05 or .02 c.f.s. ”These changes in capacity constitute flood hazards for the individuals who have property adjacent to these channels,” said Lindley, who holds a civil engineering degree from the University of Miami (Florida).
After college Lindley went to work for the Florida Road (Highway)
Department and later was village engineer in two Chicago-area municipalities, Homewood and Hinsdale.
His wife, Audrey, is business manager of the company. And though it is Lindley & Sons, the two sons are no longer working with him. They did when they were younger, Lindley said.
Tim, 32, farms the 186 acres Lindley owns in Greenville, Ill., growing row crops and raising 30 head of beef cattle.
Tom, 29, is a computer operator in Chicago. Daughter Janelle, 24, lives in Lincoln, Neb., and Jeanne, 21, is an equestrian science major at Stephens College, Columbia, Mo., and active in the Naperville Polo Club.
When Lindley worked for Hinsdale, one of the summer trainees was 19-year- old James N. Urhausen, now president of Westway Construction Corp., St. Charles.
”Everything I know about civil engineering I learned from Bill Lindley,” Urhausen said. ”He`s a wonderful guy who told all the young people fortunate to work for him that engineering is just common sense.”
Urhausen went on to become assistant village manager in Hinsdale and then Oak Brook`s first village manager. As a developer in the Fox Valley he has hired Lindley ”on a couple of difficult situations out here and though he`s always busy-he`s got thousands of clients-it`s the ultimate compliment that he drops out here to help.”
And Urhausen noted that Lindley ”has a habit of forgetting to bill” his clients.
A lot of the detention and retention ponds that are common throughout the area owe their existence to Lindley`s advocacy of dual-use facilities, Urhausen noted. Lindley designs stormwater basins that can serve other purposes when it isn`t raining-for recreation or for aesthetic values.
Lindley said that despite recent flooding in the suburbs, there`s no more rain than there used to be, and ”in our lifetime there`s going to be little or no change in precipitation. The problem is a change in runoff as development occurs. If you are paving surface-even a patio or over a gravel driveway-you increase the volume. It cannot be avoided.”
When he worked with Bauer, ”we found that you can, in fact, reduce flooding through development in the uplands of the watershed by temporarily accommodating rainfall excess close to where the water starts that cannot be accommodated downstream in a storm sewer or stream or whatever.”
Lindley warns that Elmhurst and other areas that flooded in 1987 will be hit again, and probably with worse flooding, despite the steps they`ve taken to prevent this: ”The problem they face now is the rate of flow in Salt Creek has increased greatly because in the uplands in Cook County they have an ordinance established by the (former) Metropolitan Sanitary District that does not truly accommodate all the rainfall excess produced by a given storm.
”The ordinance says you will release from a detention facility at the rate of a three-year storm, but the channel can only carry the (smaller)
annual storm.”
He added that all the storage and detention facilities upstream ”were designed under MSD outmoded criteria. I cannot criticize that because it was done with extreme concern and was one of the first ordinances in the Midwest.” But ”these reservoirs are emptying too soon and providing insufficent storage volumes.”
The Naperville ordinance, adopted in 1972 at the same time as the MSD ordinance, is ”two to three times as restrictive and doesn`t prohibit any kind of development, but it requires everyone from the taco stand to the 600- acre major land development to temporarily control the runoff from their development and all other tributary water shed to their property by providing detention and rate restriction. It has worked.
”There are areas in Naperville that formerly flooded at least once every two to three years that never flood now. Not that there isn`t stormwater all over-there is in every depression-but none in the houses.”
He cited other communities that have good stormwater management programs such as Carol Stream, Downers Grove and Lisle.
”Rainfall accumulation anyplace outside a residence is an acceptble condition,” Lindley said. ”The parks (dual-purpose detention basins) remain flooded a maximum of 72 hours, preferably 24 hours.
”Where necessary these facilities can perform a dual use so we don`t have wasted land, so we don`t have a community develop with a series of hogwallows that are useless except during a period of rainfall.”
He cited the Village Links of Glen Ellyn ”as rather a good example of natural stormwater management. That`s just natural and (the village) put a golf course in as best they good. Also Panfish Park in Glen Ellyn.”
Lindley supports a proposal by the Illinois Department of Transportation to reduce flooding along Salt Creek by modifying the Busse Woods dam in the Ned Brown Forest Preserve, near Elk Grove Village. Officials of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, where the dam is located, are lukewarm toward the idea because they fear it would jeopardize trees in the preserve.
Lindley`s reply: ”Those deciduous trees can stand 30 days in water over their crowns 4 to 5 feet and not even lose a leaf. I love trees. I do not want see one tree damaged, but when you have the opportunity to completely regulate the rate of flow for major storms but not take advantage of it because of some environmentalists` unsubstantiated statements . . . ” Lindley did not finish the sentence but then added, ”There`s politics in everything.”
For people who don`t live in a town that was farsighted enough to provide good stormwater management, ”the options are to floodproof (your home) if you live in a flood hazard zone,” Lindley said. There are many ways to do so, but the majority require a sewer backup-prevention device costing about $3,000.
Lindley is certain that there will be more bad floods in Du Page like those in 1972 and 1987 because, to borrow from Lincoln, ”you can store some of the water all of the time and all of the water some of the time but not all of the water all of the time.”
Ned Becker of Naperville said, ”I`d like to think I would have discovered it (Lindley`s stormwater theory) eventually, but I can`t be sure.” Naperville has been at odds with the state, the county and a lot of consultants on its stormwater management requirements because those people involved ”learned the old way,” Becker said. But because Lindley is ”a good preacher,” many people have lately come to take a look at what Becker calls a system that ”works with the environment, not something at odds with it.”
