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The cozy back room of the Atlantic Bar and Grill in Lincoln Square looks like a mix between an Irish pub and a grandma’s house. It’s a blend of exposed brick, wood counters, tables with classic checkered cloths, and shelves cluttered with old Christmas decorations, kitchen products, and liquor. A fiddler plays folk music and classic holiday tunes. Twenty or 30 people mill around with wine or Guinnesses in hand, eating homemade desserts.
The room is filled with cardboard trifold displays educating guests on various water-related issues facing not just Chicago, but the entire region—from PFAS pollution control legislation to flooding in the south suburbs and groundwater shortages across the midwest.
At the center of the room is the reason why everyone’s here. Sharon Waller is the newest addition to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of Greater Chicago—and the first water engineer ever elected to MWRD. The event is a fundraiser to celebrate her election.
“I’ve never met anyone like her,” says 22-year-old Nikki Koziol, a recent University of Illinois Chicago graduate and Waller’s newly hired environmental data analyst.
The MWRD bills itself as a “special purpose government agency” responsible for wastewater treatment, stormwater and flood management, and water infrastructure projects across Cook County. The body will take on just about any water-related issue in the greater Chicago area, meaning its work touches Lake Michigan as well as local rivers and streams.
“Climate resiliency, water reuse . . . people are talking about” these issues, says Cindy Skrukrud, a volunteer on Waller’s campaign with a PhD in biochemistry who worked on clean-water issues with the Sierra Club for 20 years. “The Board of Commissioners needs to think about these ideas and work with their excellent staff to start putting them into practice.”
Waller is ready. She knows this work will be challenging under Trump’s second administration, where use of the phrase “climate change” is banned and environmentalism faces existential threats like the possible gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But Waller is undeterred. She plans to educate local municipalities on funding options they currently have available—like the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—and alternative options should Trump take federal action, such as the State Revolving Fund for drinking water and wastewater projects.
“Illinois has positioned itself to be independent of the whims of [the] federal administration,” Waller tells me. “The Illinois Environmental Protection Act, Illinois Department of Public Health, and Illinois Department of Natural Resources have been thoughtful to create standards and policies that would withstand federal whims. But they need help. They’ve been sorely underfunded for years.”
Waller hopes that with more funding and “person power,” state codes—some of which predate the 1972 Clean Water Act—can be updated. Doing so wouldn’t just change things in Chicago and Illinois but also further downstream. “I’m trying to get us to think, as a state government, about our water in terms of quality,” Waller says. “It’s not helpful that we flush a billion gallons of water down the Mississippi as fast as we can push it away because this is causing the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and harmful algae blooms throughout the state.”
Water reuse is Waller’s special passion. On the bar counter, next to a pan of homemade brownies, is a display detailing the processes of water distilling, cleaning, and reuse in easily digestible diagrams. There are pictures of Waller’s homemade setup: a blue plastic kiddie pool sitting in the sun, hooked up to a complex tubing system and a large metal contraption.
With chocolate on her fingertips from the desserts she’s been cutting for guests, Waller uses her pinky to turn the pages of one of the binders. She explains how the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is now authorized to repeal the prohibition on water reuse but hasn’t done so. “Illinois is the only state in the United States of America—and the only place that I’m aware of in the entire world—that makes water reuse illegal,” Waller says. Organizations including the MWRD are founding an Illinois chapter of the WateReuse Association, and Waller hopes that it can apply pressure in the right places to encourage the official repeal of this prohibition.
She points out that 98 percent of water is recycled per day on the International Space Station. In New York City, the Domino Sugar factory redevelopment is designed with water reuse capabilities. The water treated in the building is redistributed for everything except potable uses and excess is discharged back into the river. Systems like these vastly help reduce combined sewer overflows, mitigating flooding within the city and improving water quality of the adjacent body.
In Chicago, implementing water reuse facilities like these in developments along Lake Michigan would aid climate change and help safeguard the Great Lakes—84 percent of the country’s fresh water supply.
And for proof of the potential of water reuse, Waller’s supporters need not look any further than the large jar of pumpkin-colored liquid sitting in front of the trifold. This is Waller’s effluent kombucha, made from reused water.
Eileen Brodaski, a local mom and artist who learned about water-related issues through her friendship with Waller, pours a shot glass of the cloudy liquid. She notes that not only is this the first effluent drink she’s ever tried but that previously she didn’t even know the meaning of the word.
“Turns out it’s delicious,” she says after her first sip. “Peachy!”
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