The 28-mile Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was the product of a monumental feat of engineering that reversed the flow of the Chicago River, but no one can deny it is saddled with a rather unpleasant name.<\/p>\n
A coalition of nonprofits, government bodies, elected officials, businesses, and residents has decided it’s time for a name change for the canal \u2014 and the public can vote on the name through Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Bold Past\/Bright Future Campaign<\/a> emphasizes that the word “sanitary” no longer suits the waterway. The group wants to rechristen the canal with a name that “reflects the 21st century vision for a shared resource that can support commerce at the same time that it plays a key role in community and environmental health.”<\/p>\n Through 5 p.m. Friday, the public can vote for one of the following names \u2014 which were developed after months of brainstorming by a naming committee. The committee included Native American tribal representatives, historians, conservationists, elected officials and government leaders, leaders of business and industry, academics, and everyday residents.<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Illinois) unveiled the names last week.<\/p>\n On Jan. 2, 1900, the Sanitary District of Chicago \u2014 a predecessor to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District \u2014 completed the massive undertaking of reversing the flow of the Chicago River<\/a> by digging the 28-mile canal.<\/p>\n Before the reversal, human and industrial waste would flow from the river right into Lake Michigan \u2014 the source of Chicago’s drinking water, then as now. The oft-repeated story that 90,000 people died of cholera and typhoid fever after a storm in Chicago sent sewage into the lake in 1885 has been\u00a0debunked<\/a>, but nevertheless, the flow of disgusting material from the river into the lake was a monumental public health hazard.<\/p>\n\n