Certain Blocks Near Bloomingdale and 73rd Have Flooded in 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2020. The State Just Awarded Elmwood Park $164,596 to Do Something About One Specific Intersection. Here’s What That Actually Means — and Doesn’t Mean — for Your Basement.
Elmwood Park was incorporated in 1914, built out fast around a 1926 development of more than 1,600 brick bungalows, and today sits partly inside a FEMA-designated Special Flood Hazard Area tied to the Des Plaines River and a tributary the village’s own code refers to as the Golf Course Tributary. That’s not a generic “older suburb” flooding story — it’s a documented, mapped one. In 2023, the Illinois EPA awarded Elmwood Park $164,596 in Green Infrastructure Grant funding specifically for a stormwater project at Bloomingdale Avenue and 73rd Avenue, in a residential area the state’s own award notice says has seen repeated flooding in 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2020. This guide covers what that project actually does, what it doesn’t fix, and everything else Elmwood Park homeowners need to know about drains, sewers, and flood protection in 2026.
A Village Built in One Fast Decade
Elmwood Park’s story starts earlier than most people assume — the area was originally known as Orison, with the first farmers settling in the 1840s before the Chicago & Pacific Railroad laid tracks through in 1870 and turned open prairie into platted streets. The village incorporated in 1914, driven by a desire to avoid being annexed by Chicago. But the defining moment for the housing stock most residents live in today came in 1926, when developer John Mills purchased 245 acres in the village’s northwest corner and built Westwood — more than 1,600 brick bungalows arranged in a distinctive spoke-wheel pattern around a central circle, a $25 million project selling homes for roughly $8,900 each. That means a huge share of Elmwood Park’s drain and sewer infrastructure was installed within the same handful of years, on the same original plumbing standards — the kind of housing stock that hits its collective infrastructure wall around the same time, a full century later.
The Real Flooding History, With the Actual Dates
Local flood control contractors have talked about “the flood of 2009, 2010, and 2011” in Elmwood Park for years — and those years were genuinely bad, with one 2011 storm dropping roughly seven inches of rain in a few hours and overwhelming sewer systems village-wide. But the state’s own 2023 grant award notice tells a longer and more specific story: the residential area near Bloomingdale Avenue and 73rd Avenue, about a mile east of the Des Plaines River, has seen significant flooding events in 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2020 — a fifteen-year pattern documented well enough for the Illinois EPA to fund a targeted fix.
Elmwood Park’s own municipal code confirms this isn’t informal knowledge — the village maintains an official Special Flood Hazard Area designation tied to FEMA’s countywide flood insurance rate maps for the Des Plaines River and a tributary the code names the Golf Course Tributary, with specific map panels covering both the village itself and adjacent unincorporated areas within its extraterritorial jurisdiction. If you own a home in or near that mapped floodplain, that designation affects your flood insurance requirements and options, not just your risk of a wet basement — worth confirming directly with the village if you’re not sure whether your address falls inside it.
What the $164,596 State Grant Actually Does
The Elmwood Park Stormwater Treatment Train project, funded through Illinois’ Green Infrastructure Grant Opportunity program, is a specific, engineered fix for a specific location: an open-bottom detention basin, a rain garden, and new curb cuts with bioswales at Bloomingdale Avenue and 73rd Avenue. The open-bottom design is deliberate — rather than just holding stormwater temporarily and releasing it back into the sewer system, it lets water soak into the soil underground, reducing the total volume that ever reaches the combined sewer in the first place.
Here’s the part worth being direct about: this project treats one intersection’s drainage, not the entire village’s. If you don’t live near Bloomingdale and 73rd, this specific grant doesn’t change your flood risk. What it does signal is that the state has independently confirmed, with funding attached, that Elmwood Park has a real and documented flooding problem in at least one area — which is useful context whether or not your specific block was included in this round of funding.
Elmwood Park’s Own Rebate Program and Code Requirements
Separate from the state grant, Elmwood Park has historically run its own flood control rebate program, reimbursing homeowners for a share of the cost of installing an overhead sewer or backflow prevention valve. Program terms and funding levels change, so confirm current amounts directly with the Village of Elmwood Park’s Public Works Department before budgeting around a specific figure. For a broader look at how these rebate programs work across Chicagoland, our flood control system cost guide covers what’s typically included and what to expect.
The village’s municipal code goes further than most: new construction with a basement or below-grade occupancy area is required to include overhead plumbing — every drain routed above the level where sewer surcharge could reach it — and footing drains are explicitly prohibited from connecting to the sanitary sewer system at all; they must discharge to a storm sewer, drainage ditch, or sump pump instead. If you have an older sump or footing drain setup that predates current code, it’s worth having it checked against that specific rule.
Real Work We’ve Done in Elmwood Park
We’ve been working in Elmwood Park long enough to have handled the full range of what a village with this housing stock and this flooding history actually needs. Our crews have excavated and replaced damaged sewer lines with new PVC piping and proper CA7 stone bedding, installed a 6-inch PVC clean check as part of a sewer line repair, and excavated ten feet to install a combined catch basin and ejector pump pit connected with proper fittings. We’ve replaced failed sump pumps with new Zoeller units after both a primary system and its backup failed simultaneously, capped an old sewer pipe and re-routed drainage to a new sump pit with a foundation wall discharge line, and cleared main sewer line blockages with rodding after basement backups. On the commercial side, we’ve cleared and hydro jetted three separate storm basins in a parking lot, pumping out water and debris to restore proper drainage. That’s the kind of hands-on, village-specific track record that matters more than a generic “we service your area too” claim.
Drain Cleaning: Rodding vs. Hydro Jetting
For the cast iron and clay tile common throughout Elmwood Park’s century-old bungalow stock, a technician sent through your cleanout with a steel cable and cutting head — what’s known as sewer rodding — breaks up the current blockage and restores flow fast, which is the right call for an active backup. A deeper clean that scours the entire interior wall of the pipe with pressurized water — hydro jetting — removes the buildup that rodding simply pushes past. If a drain in your Westwood bungalow has needed clearing more than twice in the past 18 months, that repetition is the signal to switch approaches, since rodding manages the same wall deposits every time while jetting actually removes them. Our complete breakdown of hydro jetting costs and scheduling across Chicagoland covers this in more depth.
What Sewer Camera Inspection Finds Here
A camera run through an unmaintained lateral in a Westwood-era Elmwood Park home typically documents one of three conditions: root intrusion at open clay tile joints from a century of parkway trees finding their way in, joint displacement from decades of freeze-thaw cycling, or a pipe belly where a section has settled below grade. Root intrusion is what explains the homeowner stuck on an annual rodding cycle — cutting roots without sealing the joint they grew through just means they come back next year. A full inspection service, rather than guessing from the symptom, is the only way to know which of the three you’re actually dealing with before paying for a repair.
Catch Basins and Storm Drains
Given how directly this village’s flooding is tied to combined sewer surcharge and stormwater capacity, catch basin condition matters more here than in a village without Elmwood Park’s flood history. A basin that’s filled with sediment and debris stops draining, which pushes stormwater somewhere it shouldn’t go — onto pavement, toward a foundation, or back into a connected drainage system. Full catch basin cleaning and pumping with a vacuum truck, paired with hydro jetting of the connected outlet pipe, is what actually restores capacity rather than just skimming standing water off the top — the same work our crews have already performed on commercial parking lot storm basins elsewhere in the village.
Lead Service Lines
Homes built before 1940 in Elmwood Park carry a near-certainty of a lead water service line, and Illinois’ mandatory replacement deadline is approaching in April 2027. The village is ahead of many of its neighbors here — it worked with Christopher B. Burke Engineering to complete a water service material survey and is actively running a Lead Service Line Replacement Program, with an active Phase I replacement effort already underway. If you haven’t confirmed whether your address is part of that inventory, it’s worth checking directly with the village before assuming your line is fine. Our own team handles full lead service line replacement with permits for Elmwood Park homeowners who need it done privately.
Water Heaters and Lake Michigan Hard Water
Elmwood Park has purchased Lake Michigan water directly from the City of Chicago since its 1914 incorporation. At roughly 130 to 150 parts per million of dissolved calcium and magnesium, that water precipitates mineral scale onto a water heater’s heating element and tank floor every time it fires. In a Westwood bungalow where the unit may be an older replacement rather than original, a rumbling or popping sound from the tank is scale superheating at the burner chamber floor — worth acting on before it fails outright.
Frequently Asked Questions
My block wasn’t part of the Bloomingdale and 73rd stormwater project. Does that mean nothing is being done about flooding near me?
Not necessarily — it means that specific, funded project targets one location. Elmwood Park’s own flood control rebate program is available village-wide for qualifying backwater valve or overhead sewer installations, regardless of whether your block is near the state-funded project area. The two are separate tools: one is public infrastructure at a specific intersection, the other is a reimbursement toward private flood protection on your own property.
Parks Plumbing & Sewer’s own website talks about the 2009-2011 floods in Elmwood Park. Is that the full picture?
It’s accurate as far as it goes — those years were genuinely severe, including a 2011 storm that dropped roughly seven inches of rain in a few hours. But the Illinois EPA’s own 2023 grant documentation shows a longer pattern of significant flooding in 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2020 near Bloomingdale and 73rd specifically. The fuller history matters because it shows this isn’t a problem from one bad decade — it’s ongoing enough that the state is still funding fixes for it now.
My basement floods with sewage-smelling water during heavy rain. Is a sump pump the fix?
No. A sump pump manages groundwater seeping in through your foundation — it does nothing to stop sanitary sewage from being pushed backward through your floor drain during a combined sewer surcharge event, which is what a sewage odor almost always indicates. The correct fix is a backwater valve or an overhead sewer conversion, which may qualify for Elmwood Park’s own rebate program.
Can I clear a recurring clogged drain myself with a store-bought chemical cleaner?
Not effectively, and not safely long-term. Chemical drain cleaners dissolve the soft leading edge of a clog enough to temporarily restore flow, but they don’t reach deposits embedded in a century-old cast iron pipe wall, and repeated use accelerates the interior corrosion that makes the pipe rougher and more clog-prone over time.
Drain or Sewer Problems in Elmwood Park?
Licensed, insured, and with real, documented job history throughout Elmwood Park — sewer line repairs, ejector pump installs, sump pump replacements, catch basin work, and storm drain cleaning. We perform hydro jetting, sewer rodding, camera inspection, backwater valve and overhead sewer installation, water heater service, and lead service line replacement, and we’ll walk you through the village’s own rebate program before any flood control work begins.
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Suburban Plumbing Sewer Line & Drain Cleaning Experts
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