Chicago West Siders wait for home, sewer fixes from 2023 floods amid threat of more severe weather damage

Andre Moseley’s Austin home was hammered by flooding twice in the summer of 2023, causing a lot of damage and leaving a stale smell of sewage in his basement.

“It was horrible,” he said. “It was coming at such a fast rate.”

The 2023 floods drenched tens of thousands of homes on the West Side, South Side and nearby suburbs with 8 to 9 inches over a short period.

Moseley’s basement, which he’d used as a recreation room, has been uninhabitable ever since. He got an initial $4,000 from the federal government, but it didn’t cover all the costs of the repairs, and he doesn’t have flood insurance.

Now he’s hoping for financial help from the city to repair his basement, though that isn’t likely to happen until next year — four years after the historic 2023 floods.

But Moseley doesn’t just need his basement fixed. Climate change is contributing to more frequent flooding after storms drop more rain over shorter periods of time. The aging sewer infrastructure in his Austin neighborhood, meant to prevent stormwater and everything flushed down the toilet from backing up into basements, is even worse than the rest of the city, which is only designed to hold 2 inches of rain.

If the city doesn’t fix the sewer infrastructure it’s possible he’ll get more unwanted basement flooding.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration acknowledged the decades of disinvestment and is pledging to spend more than $520 million, mostly federal housing dollars received last year, to respond to the historic flooding, including addressing the aging sewers.

The city plans to allocate $40 million for a home repair program for individuals like Moseley, which it says will launch next year.

Residents have already been waiting for three years and are getting impatient, and city officials acknowledge it won’t be enough.

“Decades of chronic and disparate underinvestment in the most vulnerable communities put Chicago in the unenviable position of relying on aging and crumbling water infrastructure to contend with increasingly volatile weather events and damaging storms,” said Meleah Geertsma, director of Clean Water and Equity at the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Green space and permeable surfaces are among other strategies needed to control disastrous flooding. Geertsma lauds Johnson for tackling the sewers and acknowledging the bigger problem but said it will take more efforts by state and local governments to address the chronic situation.

“There’s no way people should be still suffering,” said Princess Shaw, a West Sider who has been helping guide residents through the government programs aimed at helping flooding survivors.

But three years later, Moseley and others are still waiting for action.

Furniture and other personal property were ruined, the tiles in his basement are still loose and damaged, the walls show the marks of 2 to 3 feet of water from flooding. And the stench is still so strong Moseley has to apply bleach.

Outdated sewers

He said the city needs to address the problem. Austin’s sewer system is around 80 years old, and that’s not even the oldest on the West Side. Just to the south of Austin, the average age of sewers is 91 years old.

City sewer pipes in and around Austin, Belmont Cragin, East Garfield Park, Humboldt Park and West Garfield Park are a third of the diameter necessary to carry water away from homes, and some connecting sewers are a mere fraction of the size they should be to work effectively, according to a city report written to receive federal dollars.

In all, there are more than 250 miles of “deficient sewers” on the West Side. Chicago’s outdated local sewers are too small and can’t prevent the flooding that Moseley and his neighbors received.

“The infrastructure deficiencies which exacerbated the effects of this storm reflect decades of systemic underinvestment in West Side communities,” Johnson said in a statement to the Sun-Times in April.

The mayor, who has a home in Austin and calls himself “a fellow West Sider,” began promising help shortly after the storms of 2023. His spokespeople said it’s taken time because the process for securing federal money and distributing it is lengthy.

But now the city has $520 million mostly in federal dollars that need to be spent in the next few years. That’s in addition to $500 million federal emergency officials doled out to about 75,000 residents in 2023.

City Hall acknowledged the sewer infrastructure issues in a more than 100-page “action plan,” a blueprint to begin tackling the flood challenges, including upgrading the sewers to “meet modern standards.” In addition to cleaning and replacing outdated sewers, the city is considering building more water storage under streets.

According to the city’s plan, the other high priorities for flood prevention include increasing natural public places, such as parks, and planting more trees that can absorb water. The city said it also needs to increase permeable spaces, including its 1,900 miles of alleyways, and do a study to assess stormwater drainage trends.

The storms of 2023 and another storm the following year exposed the vulnerability of low-income communities on the West Side, which is predominantly Black. In addition to the economic impact, the floods also present health risks, the city states in its plan.

“In order to ensure long-term recovery and strengthen future resilience, infrastructure systems must be enhanced to support the demands of storms of similar magnitude,” according to the plan.

This article was produced as a project for USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism and Center for Climate Journalism and Communication 2025 Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship