The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, historically known as the Chicago Drainage Canal, is the only shipping link between the Great Lakes (specifically Lake Michigan by way of either the Chicago River or the Calumet-Saganashkee (Cal-Sag) Channel) and the Mississippi River system, by way of the Illinois and Des Plaines Rivers. The canal also carries Chicago's treated sewage into the Des Plaines River. Before completion of the canal in 1900, the sewage in the Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan, the city's drinking water supply. The canal is part of the Chicago Wastewater System, operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. In 1999, the system was named a Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The Canal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 20, 2011.
The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal is 28 miles (45 kilometers) long, 202 feet (62 m) wide, and 24 feet (7.3 m) deep. Prior to its construction, the shallower and narrower Illinois and Michigan Canal (1848) connected the same waterways for navigable shipping over the Chicago Portage.
Read more about Chicago Sanitary And Ship Canal: Reasons For Construction, Planning and Construction, 1887–1922, Diversion of Water From Great Lakes, Pollution of The Canals, Asian Carp and The Canal
Famous quotes containing the words chicago, sanitary, ship and/or canal:
“Must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“If men could menstruate ... clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how long and how much.... Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammed Ali’s Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields—”For Those Light Bachelor Days.””
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea,”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. I saw a ship a-sailing (l. 1–2)
“My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)