Rachel Schuette and her family still are recovering from floods that ravaged the area almost two years ago.
Seven feet of water poured into her basement in Lisle, a town particularly hard hit among widespread damage in April 2013. More than a quarter of her home was damaged. On top of the obvious trauma, Schuette said she felt blindsided by the news that she and her family had to evacuate.
“We were clueless. I was just told by the police officers, ‘Leave. Get out,'” Schuette said at a recent community meeting. “I was not made aware of the emergency shelter that was set up at Benedictine (University), not made aware of really anything.”
Schuette and other DuPage County residents shared some of their experiences with county stormwater officials Thursday night. DuPage officials are soliciting resident feedback as they fashion a more meticulous, long-term road map to better prepare the area from future floods and other natural disasters. The result will be the East Branch DuPage River Watershed Resiliency Plan, focusing on the waterways stretching from Addison and Bloomingdale down to Will County.
Officials say the plan will address flood mitigation and water quality, but also will explore institutional and behavioral changes to help improve stormwater practices from one community to another. The plan also will discuss droughts, blizzards and other severe weather events.
“We want to make the East Branch more resilient so we don’t have such a long recovery time,” said Sarah Hunn, chief engineer for DuPage County Stormwater Management. “Part of that is bringing the community together as a whole so everyone understands that they are part of this community group that is a watershed.”
The need for better communication about the issue of flooding in DuPage County was among the most frequent demands from community members. Other residents who said they live just south of the College of DuPage Campus in Glen Ellyn said they also were caught off guard when water cascaded into their homes.
“If I had had an hour’s notice, I could have sandbagged and kept water out of my house,” one resident said. “And by the time we knew we needed sandbags, they said they couldn’t have anyone bring them to us anyway.”
Shamili Ajgaonkar of Wheaton said she felt residents needed more basic education about flooding, including a way property owners can measure how much water flows off their land so they can determine what mitigation is necessary.
“For that we need to see some real data about what kinds of rain events we can expect; what is the capacity of our infrastructure; what can residents, business owners and everyone else do to work together,” said Ajgaonkar, 51. “The community has to own the problems and own the solution.”
The county’s first draft of the plan is scheduled to be released Feb. 9. Residents will be able to review it and offer more feedback. The plan then would be evaluated by the county’s stormwater commission and the County Board, likely in March.
A portion of this plan also will form the basis of the county’s application into the National Disaster Resilience Competition under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Dozens of governmental bodies that suffered a natural disaster between 2011 and 2013 qualified to participate in hopes of potentially landing millions of dollars in federal grants. DuPage and Cook counties, the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois all are eligible to compete because of the 2013 floods.
The plan will be used regardless of whether the county receives federal funding, according to Anthony Charlton, county director of stormwater management. In the meantime, residents said they hoped the county will follow through on what it started.
“I think that this is good to put it all out there because different people are affected in different ways,” said Schuette, 32. “You just hope that something positive comes from it.”
“I’m glad to see the willingness of the county to work with people and municipalities,” said Jolene Stokesberry, 49, of Wheaton. “That’s how awareness comes about, that’s how things get done.”
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