Feds award Illinois $8.6 million grant to alleviate flooding on I-290, near Maywood

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Thursday it is giving more than $8.6 million to Illinois officials to help stop flooding on Interstate 290 and in Maywood as part of a climate resilience program.

It was one of 80 projects in 37 states to get part of the $830 million in grants allocated for the new program, which is designed to strengthen transportation systems across the country against extreme weather events intensified by climate change, according to a news release from the federal agency.

“Extreme weather, made worse by climate change, is damaging America’s transportation infrastructure, cutting people off from getting to where they need to go, and threatening to raise the cost of goods by disrupting supply chains,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a news release.

The Illinois Department of Transportation was awarded a more than $8.6 million “resiliency improvement grant” to upgrade sewer systems along Harrison Street, which the federal agency said will reduce flooding on I-290, which runs parallel to the street, and in nearby Maywood.

The state transportation agency said the project would alleviate stress on the area’s storm water systems when extreme rainfalls do hit and was part of a larger project on the Eisenhower to “meet current and future challenges of a growing population facing climate change.”

More than $200 million in federal flood relief was awarded to thousands of Cook County residents whose homes flooded during extreme rainstorms last summer — the second-highest amount of aid provided for individual households in a federally declared disaster in Illinois since 2003, the earliest year for which data was available, according to a WBEZ analysis. A disaster recovery center was later opened in Riverdale.

“Every community in America knows the impacts of climate change and extreme weather, including increasingly frequent heavy rain and flooding events across the country and sea-level rise that is inundating infrastructure in coastal states,” said Federal Highway Administration administrator Shailen Bhatt.

The Champaign County Regional Planning Commission also received a $380,000 planning grant from the program to identify vulnerabilities to severe weather in the area.