Arianna Norris, 63, paid cash for her home. For as long as she’s lived here, during intense rainstorms, water surrounds her property and last year her basement started flooding.
Norris was around four years ago when residents in Alorton, Cahokia, and Centreville voted for the merger that created Cahokia Heights and disbanded the Commonfields of Cahokia Public Water District.
The merger was an effort to address the sewage overflows that have plagued the area for decades, thanks to leaky pipes and broken equipment in the aging system that allow raw sewage to escape, flooding homes, streets and businesses.
But given her experience with months-long floods last summer, Norris is skeptical that the city’s sewer system will ever be fixed, even with the merger’s promise — that combining the three cities would give Cahokia Heights a larger population and a shot at multi-million dollar federal grants for repairs.
She knows the city has applied for grants, received some of them, and completed some work. She sees crews making repairs, but she also still experiences flooding.
“They might as well have just taken a match to it,” Norris said, of the grant money “I know they spent it, but I don’t know where.”
Like other smaller communities, the city’s still relatively small tax base and fewer resources hinder its ability to pay for the kind of multimillion dollar projects that could resolve overflows.
It is among five dozen communities in Southern Illinois and the Metro East that account for a third of sanitary sewer overflows reported to the state of Illinois within the last decade, according to data from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. Unless authorized by a permit, sewer overflows into U.S. waters are violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act, which the Illinois EPA enforces.
Cahokia Heights tried the 2021 merger and applications for numerous grants to remedy the problem with mixed results. Other communities with overflow issues have tried approaches like selling parts of their sewer systems.
Yet for Norris and others in Southern Illinois, the overflows persist.
While these residents wait for relief they continue to endure property damage, fear and distrust of the drinking water and damaging health impacts.
Surrounded by sewer water
As of 2020 when an engineering report on sewer repairs was completed, Cahokia Heights needed to repair or replace at least 800 feet of sewer pipes, six sections of water main, 19 fire hydrants, eight lift stations, and more than 50 pump stations according to grant applications submitted the following year.
The estimated cost: more than $24 million.
A third of the majority-Black population of Cahokia Heights lives below the poverty line. The community’s median household income is $37,975 — less than half of the state’s median. As of publication, Illinois Answers had not received a requested copy of the city’s most recent budget.
Poorer areas and communities of color often face the greatest risk when it comes to sewage backups, flooding, and access to clean drinking water. Decades of infrastructure disinvestment and neglect can exacerbate problems with old sewer systems, and expensive home repairs from flooding damage or cleanup are tough to make on a limited income.
Two out of the three former cities that make up present-day Cahokia Heights had wastewater collection and transport systems built in the 1980s that have been poorly maintained, according to the Illinois EPA. The newly merged city sits in the Mississippi River floodplain, located about 30 minutes east of St. Louis.
Between 2014 and 2024, the city accounted for a quarter of all sanitary sewer overflow reports submitted to the Illinois EPA by permittees not regulated by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program, according to data obtained from the agency. Those with NPDES permits are allowed to discharge into waterways so long as contaminants are below a certain level.
But a lag in enforcing SSO reporting from more rural communities until recent years may contribute to the issue.
“Historically any time a new requirement comes down the pipeline, it seems like larger communities are the first ones tested for compliance,” said Cody Moake, chief of staff to the Marion mayor.
The sewer system in Cahokia Heights as a whole is still broken and the overflows happen despite repairs. Attorneys with Equity Legal Services, who represent citizens of Cahokia Heights in multiple lawsuits, said residents report that repairs are made but fail within weeks or months.
Other repairs made flooding worse in some residents’ yards and houses.
Last summer during a storm, Norris’ house was surrounded by water for six weeks, and another resident was without hot water for over two weeks after the flood destroyed her hot water tank, according to the complaint filed by attorneys. Within a week, St. Clair County, where Cahokia Heights is located, was declared a disaster zone by the U.S. government.
Solution: A merger to secure more funds
Since the 2021 merger, more than $35 million in grants have been awarded to Cahokia Heights, according to Illinois EPA data. The data indicates an estimated $200 million would be needed for flood mitigation and to repair or replace sanitary sewer and drinking water systems.
The agency aggregates this data from multiple sources, and a disclaimer attached to the data states that there is “no assumed review of accuracy or completeness by EPA.”
Almost $12 million in awarded grants comes from federal agencies including the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, funds earmarked by U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth and from the American Rescue Plan Act.
But securing the funds is only part of the battle.
To use these funds, Cahokia Heights has to apply to the various agencies that control the money for approval on how it’s spent.
When applying for a grant, cities have to provide information about how the money will be spent and preparing those plans isn’t cheap. For example, preliminary engineering on two parts of the sewer system over the last two years cost the city more than $400,000, according to invoices from Hurst-Roche, a Hillsboro-based engineering firm.
In Johnston City, about two hours south of Cahokia Heights, officials secured a $68,000 grant from the Delta Regional Authority to map out the sewer system in anticipation of applying for a larger grant, Mayor Doug Dobbins said. The DRA is a federal-state collaboration established 25 years ago to invest in basic public infrastructure in eight states along the Mississippi River.
Dobbins said getting the grant would have been impossible without help from a pro bono grant writer.
An overflow complaint from Johnston City was reported to the Illinois EPA in November of last year citing “dead fish, black water” and “a foul odor.” When EPA staff investigated, they didn’t find dead fish, but noted in a report that repairs were needed to prevent future basement backups. In response to a records request, the Illinois EPA found no Johnston City sewer overflow reports from the last five years.
Dobbins said the November break was an equipment malfunction and “could happen with an old or a new valve.” The break came about a week after record rainfall once again hit the region.
Prior to the overflow, Dobbins said, city staff were developing a replacement plan for the city’s wastewater treatment plant, which began providing service in the early 1980s with an estimated 25-year lifespan. It’s nearly 50 years old.
Keeping an older plant running can cost cities money, too, he said — when equipment would break, sometimes they’d find that the parts needed were no longer made, and they had to pay for a custom fabrication.
Without the no-cost grant writer, Dobbins said he doesn’t think the city would be considered for most grants.
“What takes [a grant writer] three hours would take us three weeks,” Dobbins said. He’s still unsure if the entire plant needs replacing, or just parts of it, but he anticipates a request from state officials in the near future for a plan.
Even if the preparation to make repairs gets done, a small tax base means some funding is out of reach. Grants can require a 50/50 split, meaning a municipality has to pay for half of the project and the agency providing the grant pays for the other half.
“And there’s no doubt in my mind that this project starts with an ‘M,’” he said, referring to the millions he thinks it’ll take to repair or replace the wastewater plant in Johnston City.
“We’re a retirement community,” Dobbins said. “We can’t afford that.”
In Carterville, about two hours south of Cahokia Heights, Mayor Bradley Robinson said the city has spent $1 million just on engineering for the city’s proposed new wastewater treatment plant.
State and federal intervention has had little effect.
In December, five years after the sewage overflows and severe flooding began getting widespread attention in the press, the Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined a lawsuit, along with the U.S. Department of Justice and the state and federal environmental protection agencies on behalf of Cahokia Heights residents.
As a part of the enforcement, the agencies filed a consent decree that, according to a release from Raoul’s office, “requires Cahokia Heights to pay a $30,000 civil penalty and invest approximately $30 million in extensive sewer improvement projects, conduct system-wide repairs and ensure the community is updated with its progress on upgrades.”
But “the 15 years doesn’t even include [a requirement for] the system being fully functional,” said Nicole Nelson, an attorney for Equity Legal Services, which represents Cahokia Heights residents in a separate lawsuit.
The decree also provides a caveat: If Cahokia Heights “demonstrates that an SSO would not have occurred but for the conditions in the City of East St. Louis sewer system,” the city won’t be obligated to fix the source of the overflow. The two cities’ systems are connected.
In overflow reports from East St. Louis, none blamed Cahokia Heights, but in the last 10 years, eight Cahokia Heights reports cited the East St. Louis system as the cause. A wastewater treatment plant in the nearby village of Sauget also cites East St. Louis in reports as a contributor to overflows there.
Precipitation and equipment failures were cited as causes of overflows in East St. Louis.
But Dawayne Stewart, assistant finance director for East St. Louis, said “there’s never been a comprehensive study” of where sewer problems are located in the city. On April 10, the East St. Louis City Council considered an agreement with an engineering group to complete a sewer study, but it died without any votes.
“We’re still having a ton of problems,” Stewart said. In June, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources announced a $2.6 million plan to buy out flood-damaged properties in East St. Louis citing “stronger and more frequent storms.” In December, state and federal authorities filed suit against overflows in the city of East St. Louis.
Robert Betts, city manager of East St. Louis, declined to comment, but said the “proper functioning of the sanitary and storm water sewer system is of paramount importance.”
Meanwhile, with slashes to federal funding targeting environmental projects, federal support for these fixes is at risk.
The main sources of funding for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure are the U.S. EPA, the Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through programs like the Safe Drinking Water and Clean Water state revolving funds. The Associated General Contractors of America, a construction association, calls these federal funds “highly successful but chronically underfunded.”
U.S. Representative Nikki Budzinski, whose district includes Cahokia Heights, is worried after she said she learned that the Trump administration had plans to cut staff from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, potentially including those who manage natural disaster responses.
In April, Budzinski visited Granite City, about 20 minutes north of Cahokia Heights, to meet with residents and criticized Republicans for federal cuts. The cut funding included over $1 million for part of the project in Cahokia Heights. The city’s engineer said the cut funding would have gone toward separating the Cahokia Heights and East St. Louis systems — they will now have to start the appropriations process again.
In early June, the Illinois EPA announced nearly $10 million in combined grant programs for sewer overflows and watershed management. This comes months after the Illinois Answers Project began requesting records and asking the agency about sanitary sewer overflows.
The state of Illinois also provides funding for sewer infrastructure projects through community development block grants and other grant programs, like the unsewered communities planning grant program announced by the Illinois EPA at the end of last year.
Solution: Fix the Harding Ditch
Despite the consent decree mandating system-wide repairs, a lawyer for Cahokia Heights has attributed the city’s sewage problem to homeowner mismanagement in past court filings.
But an Illinois Answers review of the Illinois EPA overflow reports found only a sixth of the reports made by the city attribute overflows to equipment failures, from line breaks to pumps failing. Three quarters of the reports cite heavy rain or snow melt — or stormwater — as causes.
Stormwater and lack of maintenance of the infrastructure meant to contain it — such as canals or ditches designed to prevent flooding by allowing surface water to drain into them — adds to the overflow problem.
In Cahokia Heights, stormwater eventually flows to several larger ditches, including the Harding Ditch, an 11-mile-long drainage ditch that runs through several Metro East communities. Two years ago, the mayors of Cahokia Heights and East St. Louis said solving the flooding problems would be tough without remediating the Harding Ditch.
The Harding Ditch is maintained by the Metro East Sanitary District, and is the “primary drainage path” for the southern part of the Metro East levee system, with multiple tributaries that empty into the ditch, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“The ditch network is supposed to channel water from the ditches into the levee system,” said Kalila Jackson, one of the Equity Legal Services attorneys. “But because the ditches are not clean, they’re not dredged, they’re not properly maintained. They’re dammed up.”
Fixing the stormwater issues will cost millions, according to lawsuit documents. Patricia Greenwood, 75, has lived her entire life in her home in the Piat Place neighborhood. In that neighborhood alone, the current estimate is $12 million or more.
“Yet the city has only applied for two grants to address the stormwater infrastructure across all neighborhoods, one of which was rejected and the other still pending,” according to court filings.
Fixing the Harding Ditch alone could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take longer than a decade, according to local engineering firms.
At a November MESD board meeting, Tom Schooley, the attorney representing the board, said “By being proactive and cleaning the Harding Ditch, it helps our position in the litigation,” referring to the suit brought by Centreville Citizens for Change against the city of Cahokia Heights and MESD.
In the same meeting, Schooley announced the closing of a $8.4 million deal with Illinois American Water which provided MESD with funding to begin work on the Harding Ditch.
The deal transferred the responsibilities for two MESD-run sewer systems to Illinois American Water, a private water company that has increased its sewer footprint in the Metro East in recent years. MESD no longer owns or operates any sewer systems.
It would have cost too much to fix the systems, said former board president Scott Oney. The board tried to apply for a grant to do so several years ago, but if the grant had been secured, it would have meant an increase on customers’ bills, Oney said. The board decided the best course of action, then, was to sell the two systems to Illinois American Water.
Solution: Selling to Private Water
When repairing and replacing old systems to prevent sewer overflows becomes too expensive, they can become business opportunities for private water companies like Illinois American Water.
Such companies benefit when there is less federal funding for water systems, said Bryan McDaniel, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer rights advocacy group. When systems are in disrepair, they are more likely to be sold to private companies.
In 2013, Illinois passed a law allowing private water companies to purchase public water systems and pass costs on to consumers. An amendment to the law in 2018 extended it for another decade and also removed a limit on the size of water systems that private companies can buy, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Illinois American Water has pledged that it can and does make repairs and investments that “would not be feasible for a single community to take care of on its own,” according to an email from company spokesman Terry Mackin. In two systems purchased by the company since 2019, hourslong sanitary sewer overflows were reported years after the purchases were completed.
In Cahokia Heights, Illinois American Water doesn’t own any of the sewage system, but the company owns about 20% of the drinking water system in former Alorton and Centreville, which it owned prior to the city merger.
Illinois American Water raised rates twice, in 2023 and this year, on customers in Cahokia Heights. In the first increase, bills rose by almost $7 per month, and in the latest hike, bills increased by $15 per month. Both were attributed to “infrastructure projects statewide,” according to an email from Illinois American Water spokesman Terry Mackin.
Since 2010, the company put $10 million into the portion of Cahokia Heights’ drinking water system that it owns, Mackin’s email said, and another $139 million in “replacements and updates” at the regional East St. Louis water treatment plant, which provides drinking water to Cahokia Heights and other Metro East communities.
The remaining 80% of the drinking water system there is owned by Cahokia Heights, Mackin confirmed. The city purchases water wholesale from Illinois American Water, and owns and operates the water distribution and delivery system, including customer service and all infrastructure.
Illinois American Water announced two years ago that it met requirements of a U.S. EPA order to improve drinking water safety in Cahokia Heights. It applies only to the part of the system the company owns.
“Our actions showed that the issues in Cahokia Heights are about wastewater and flooding and not drinking water service from Illinois American Water,” Mackin’s email said.
Still, William McNeal, 73, a Cahokia Heights resident and a customer of the company, said he doesn't trust the water that comes out of his faucet. Greenwood, also an Illinois American Water customer, doesn’t trust hers, either. They both use bottled water.
In the email, Mackin wrote that the company works with customers “individually and directly” when they’re contacted regarding water quality issues.
Using bottled water is a “consumer’s decision,” he wrote, and “for Illinois American Water customers, it is not necessary for health and/or safety reasons.”
“Heavy rain in recent years in the River Bend has presented challenges in wastewater overflows,” Mackin wrote. “Community wastewater systems, in general, are not built to handle the high volume of rain in recent years in this area.” Mackin also wrote that the company has invested approximately $58 million in Alton since acquisition and $10.8 million in Jerseyville, the two systems that had hourslong overflows after the company purchased them.
“It takes time to analyze, review, design, build and implement improvements,” Mackin wrote.
Solution: Generating funds locally by raising the bills
In Murphysboro and Marion, located about two hours south of Cahokia Heights, where locally generated funds are having some impact, former city officials put service fees on wastewater bills years ago in anticipation of future repairs.
“We only have sanitary sewer overflows when we have an extremely heavy downpour,” said Will Stephens, Murphysboro mayor since 2013. The city of 7,000 is about ten minutes west of Carbondale.
Stephens credits the former Murphysboro mayor for putting a $10 assessment on water bills in the late 2000s to prepare for future infrastructure needs. That money effectively helped finance a loan through the Illinois EPA to build a new wastewater treatment plant completed almost a decade ago.
Within the last few years, Murphysboro also began replacing sewer lines using cured-in-place pipe, he said, and the city financed that work with ARPA funds. This method of pipe repair inserts new material into the pipe to replicate its shape, where it hardens in place.
In Marion, sewer lines were replaced with the same cured-in-place method, Moake said. Those repairs, plus drier weather, have helped bring the number of sewer overflows reported to the Illinois EPA down in Marion from more than 100 three years ago to 24 last year.
Marion is financing the repairs with a debt-forgiveness loan from the Illinois EPA and there's been a debt service fee built into customers’ sewer bills, now $12.31, for decades, Moake said.
The median household income in Marion is $57,281 — almost $20,000 more than the median income in Cahokia Heights. Greenwood showed Illinois Answers copies of three bills totaling $100 that she pays each month for water treatment, water service and sewer service.
Even a $10 per month increase would be a hardship.
“We would have to cut some things out at the grocery store, or gas in the car, or going places,” Greenwood said. “That’s extra money.”
Murphysboro residents expressed similar sentiments in 2005 after sewer bills saw a $10 increase.
Yet the overflows persist
While some communities, like Murphysboro, have found promising solutions, residents in Cahokia Heights and other cities in Southern Illinois and the Metro East are trying to find ways to cope while they wait for solutions they fear may never come.
Represented by Equity Legal Services and environmental justice organization EarthJustice, Cahokia Heights residents are embroiled in two separate lawsuits regarding the sewer overflows. The lawsuits were filed in 2020 and 2021 and are separate from the federal and state agencies’ actions against the city.
The Equity Legal Services team provides McNeal, and dozens of other households with multiple cases of bottled water each month. McNeal said he uses it to cook, drink and brush his teeth.
It’s enough water for him, he said. But he just wants to be able to turn on his tap and trust what comes out.
When there’s substantial rainfall, like there was in April, a sewage overflow next to McNeal’s house turns into a smelly river.
It’s a mix of wastewater and stormwater, and McNeal never knows exactly how contaminated the water is; just that somewhere in the flow, there’s raw sewage. The overflow spills out of the pipe and runs alongside his house, bordering his backyard where he tends a small garden of greens.
His kids want him to sell the house and move, or leave without selling it, he said, but McNeal’s not planning on doing either.
“I worked for this,” said McNeal, whose home is paid off. He shared the same sentiment with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch five years ago when the situation in Cahokia Heights received a flurry of media coverage. Little has changed since then.
The river that springs up next to his house during pounding rain frustrates him. But the water bills bother him even more.
“The killing part is they steady send you bills, and they said the water was treated and I could drink it,” McNeal said.
McNeal said repairs made near his house earlier this year stopped bathtub and toilet backups. But the pipe in his yard still spews water when it rains.
Authorities acknowledge relief may still be years away. In an update last September on the two remaining lawsuits against Cahokia Heights, lawyers for the U.S. DOJ and the Illinois Attorney General’s Office wrote “due to the long-term nature of sewer infrastructure upgrades, some SSOs [sanitary sewer overflows] will likely continue to occur.”
The federal and state attorneys are not party to the lawsuit but were “willing to aid the court in its understanding of this matter.”
In response to emailed questions from Illinois Answers about enforcement in Cahokia Heights and East St. Louis, Illinois EPA spokeswoman Kim Biggs said because the municipalities are in joint enforcement with the Illinois EPA, U.S. EPA and the DOJ, she could not comment further.
Multiple attempts to reach Cahokia Heights officials were unsuccessful.
The continued overflows with no end in sight are not news to residents who live with them. They wait in their flood-prone homes, anticipating another soggy Illinois wet season.
At the home of Cornelius Bennett, one of the residents who originally sued the city in 2020, a new backflow preventer, which prevents contaminated water from flowing back into the clean water supply, ended up causing more issues.
“When it rains hard and/or consistently, the top of his backflow preventer pops off due to the pressure of the system and raw sewage sprays everywhere. He keeps bricks on top of the preventer to stem the flow of sewage that escapes,” a November court filing said.
Norris said her basement flooded for the first time last July after a repair was made nearby. Flooding surrounding her home was common during rainstorms.
Norris feels like giving up, some days, though she thought she’d retire peacefully in Cahokia Heights.
She spends her time working part-time at the Cahokia library and pushing for relief from the overflows. Though she’s exhausted, and she didn’t think she’d “have to go back into fighting mode” in retirement, she's digging her heels in and is determined to stay. Others, she says, may be running out of steam.
Norris has been to several town hall meetings on the water and sewer projects held by city officials over the years. Attendance at the meetings was once robust, she said, but waned as time went on. The meetings were “minimally advertised,” attorneys said, and they did not see much community engagement.
“It is heartbreaking and sometimes it can be almost soul crushing because you feel like you’re up against it,” Norris said. “That’s the worst part is the feeling that nobody cares.”
Methodology: How we reported this story
Illinois Answers examined a decade’s worth (2014-2024) of sewer overflow data and reports obtained from the Illinois EPA. In response to a Freedom of Information Act seeking sanitary sewer overflow data for the time period, two spreadsheets were provided.
Reports are submitted to the agency by governments when an overflow occurs. For some entities — those not permitted under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System — Illinois EPA staff enter the data from the reports into a spreadsheet for internal tracking purposes. The reports are entered manually by Illinois EPA staff within one week of receipt, said Illinois EPA spokeswoman Kim Biggs. The internal tracking spreadsheet is not public.
Another spreadsheet represents overflows reported by NPDES permittees. SSO reports from NPDES permitted facilities, which are those that discharge to waters of the U.S., are entered into the U.S. EPA’s Integrated Compliance Information System (ICIS) database. That database is public, and is where the spreadsheet provided to the Illinois Answers Project came from.
The PDF reports submitted by government agencies, including cities, villages, and sewer districts, were obtained through a series of separate Freedom of Information Act requests. The reports were used to corroborate information in the spreadsheets provided by the Illinois EPA and fill in gaps of time where reports of overflows did not appear in the spreadsheet.
For example, years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 were missing entirely from one spreadsheet.
“Our staff did do additional checking and unfortunately could not find any spreadsheets with those years for your request,” Biggs said. For localities named in Illinois Answers Project stories, PDF reports were requested for the missing years and manually entered by Illinois Answers Project staff into a copy of the spreadsheet.
The reports are handwritten and provide the authors some latitude to describe conditions. If there are ranges provided — for example, if “8 to 24 hours” is provided for the duration of overflow — the lower end, 8, was entered into the spreadsheet.
If “unknown” was entered on the form in a space, that value is shown in the spreadsheet. If it was left blank, it is blank in the spreadsheet. When dates were not correct in the spreadsheet or the report showed a different date, they were corrected with the date shown on the report.
When multiple overflows were reported for the same day, even if the rows of data for each overflow were identical and no PDF reports were returned for those records, the rows were not dropped from the spreadsheet because a permittee can have multiple overflows in different locations in one day. In several of those cases, the date of the overflow was the same, but location of the overflow or other important details — amount discharged, what happened to water discharged — differed.
For records in both spreadsheets:
Some rows in the spreadsheets — each row represents one report — matched the reports provided exactly.
Other rows in the spreadsheet existed but efforts to obtain PDF reports for that overflow record were unsuccessful. For some — including ten reports submitted in Cahokia Heights — reports were returned in a Freedom of Information Act request but corresponding rows were not in the spreadsheet. In that case, rows were added to the spreadsheet for data analysis purposes. Reports with no corresponding rows were found more often for overflows occurring in earlier years, prior to 2020, when cases in Cahokia Heights were filed and began to make news.
The form to submit a Sanitary Sewer Overflow to the Illinois EPA can be found here.
