One of the biggest challenges the city faced was waste management.
It was once again Chesbrough who came to the citys rescue.
Chesbrough proposed an audacious planreverse the flow of the river away from Lake Michigan.
Any rainfall on the east of the divide flows into the Great Lakes.
Work on the canal could not begin until 1892, six years after Chesbroughs death.
Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal being built.
The most immediately affected were those communities that resided downstream.
By 1905, nearly 300 landowners in the Illinois Valley filed suit against the Sanitary District of Chicago.
In doing so, they created a new pathway for invasive species.
Preventing the influx of invasive water species now costs the Great Lakes Region billions of dollars every year.
It wasnt until the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 that rivers began to recover.
Still, throughout the 1980s, the Chicago river was quite dirty and often filled with garbage.
