That was a tremendous construction project, one of the biggest of its time. KOLBERT: So in the early years of the 20th century, it was decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River. Typhoid and cholera outbreaks were common. KELLY: All that filth flowed into Lake Michigan, which was a problem because the city also drinks from Lake Michigan. As Elizabeth Kolbert writes in her new book "Under A White Sky," in the 1800s, the Chicago River was choked with human waste, cow manure, sheep dung and rotting animal guts from stockyards.ĮLIZABETH KOLBERT: And it was said that the Chicago River was so thick with filth that a chicken could walk across it without getting her feet wet. The Chicago River today resembles just about any other river in that it looks like water.
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