The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has increased Oakbrook Terrace’s Lake Michigan water allocation for this year by more than 54 percent.
The state agency also has raised its allocations for the city with graduated increases in each year through 2020,with the rise that year 91 percent above the previously authorized level.
City officials announced Tuesday night that the state had made its ruling in late January. An allocation governs the maximum amount of water a community may draw from Lake Michigan for its residents.
Some city businesses and multifamily residential buildings have received Lake Michigan water since 1992 by being directly connected to neighboring Oak Brook’s water system. But residents in Oakbrook Terrace’s main single-family subdivision didn’t begin receiving lake water until the city built a distribution system in 1999.
Since then, the city’s 111,000-gallon-per day allocation, which was designed primarily to benefit the 330 homes in the subdivision and several neighboring commercial properties, has become too limited, as officials have approved expanding the system to serve a large office development on Butterfield Road.
