Sump Pump

Some residents may not be aware of whether their sump pump discharge is connected to the sanitary service that manages the Village’s sanitary disposal. The problem with illegal cross connections is that they flow thousands of gallons of unnecessary storm water into a sanitary system that is engineered to collect waste water and sewage only. When that system is asked to handle additional water flow from a storm event, something for which it was not designed to do, it often can lead to sewage backups into homes and businesses. In many cases, it is this issue that results in flooding basements, where the system has become saturated with additional water that it was never designed to handle. Any home that has a sump pump should also have a discharge pipe that carries water OUTSIDE of the home and discharges it away from the foundation of the home. If the resident follows the discharge pipe from their sump pump, they should find that it exits their home through a nearby wall in the basement. Once outside, that pipe should discharge the collected water from around the foundation drain tiles and into the resident’s grass.

If the resident does not find that the sump pump pipe discharges outside of the home, contact the Public Works Department immediately at 708-449-8840 to request an inspection of the discharge status. While the resident might not have suffered a flooding event in the basement yet, continuing to discharge into the sanitary systems will leave the home open to flooding in the future. Therefore, solving this issue before it becomes a problem may prevent a neighbor from having to suffer a flooding event ever again.