In 1900, Chicago made its river flow backward to keep sewage out of Lake Michigan, redirecting the water toward the Mississippi Basin instead

Imagine your city drawing its drinking water and sewage from the same river. That was Chicago’s problem in the late 1800s. The Chicago River flushed the city’s waste into Lake Michigan, the city’s sole source of drinking water. According to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD), a fast-growing population and fear of disease pushed officials to act. Their fix was bold. They decided to reverse the flow of an entire river.

A city poisoning its own water