The City of Peoria is getting some academic help in tackling its combined-sewer-overflow problem. The City is in talks with the EPA about ways to fix the overflow issue that periodically ends up polluting the Illinois River. To help meet that goal, architecture students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shared green infrastructure designs. Professor Danika Cooper says proposals include South Side bicycle networks and parkland that captures rainwater while giving residents new greenspace:
“Solutions that not only deal with flooding and overflow issues, but also kind of address some of the economic and social structure of this neighborhood.”
Anthony Corso is with Peoria’s Innovation Team looking at the issue. He says students solutions could be included into final proposals that fix the CSO problem:
“We’re looking at how do we solve this problem, this very expensive problem that we’re all going to have to pay for, but we make sure that the whole community gets benefit out of it.”
City officials say next steps include holding more community public input meetings and getting feedback on proposed ways to fix the CSO issue.