Skokie makes further investment in waterworks following 2025 main break

The Village of Skokie is committing upward of $200,000 to further assess its critical infrastructure in a preemptive measure officials hope will mitigate future emergencies similar to the disastrous water main break in February of 2025.

Skokie’s Village Board during its Monday, April 6 meeting unanimously approved a comprehensive assessment of the conditions of the village’s “significant” transmission mains.

According to a memo from Patrick Hastings, Skokie’s director of public works, officials are classifying the significant water mains as ones that are sized 16 inches and above.

Skokie in early 2025 faced a state of local emergency when a water main broke near East Prairie Road and Emerson Street. The main failure — which occurred in the early morning hours of Feb. 14 — caused heavy local flooding, led to the loss of water for many nearby homes, forced extended boil orders, tested the village’s emergency response and led to a monthslong investigation.

Village officials after the completion of those emergency repairs put in motion what they described as a “comprehensive failure analysis” conducted by an engineering firm that aimed to determine a cause for the significant break.

In mid-November of last year, Sean Dee, an engineer from Exponent, the Chicago-based firm hired for the investigation, said the break was most likely caused by “gradual deterioration” to a 36-inch junction piece that had “inadequate” structural support to its end cap, The Record previously reported.

That junction, known as a “wye assembly,” helps change the direction of water flow. If one leg of the junction is not used, then it is plugged with an end cap, Exponent’s summary showed.

The village also last summer as part of Exponent’s investigation excavated and exposed two other locations along the same water main that suffered the failure, according to Hastings’ memo.

Examining two other wye connections and the thrust restraints systems used with those wyes was the purpose of the additional study, Hastings said, noting that the village replaced both connections with elbow joints and installed new thrust restraints.

Officials now want to go a step further and analyze the condition of other large mains with the study approved Monday night.

Downers Grove-based RJN, an engineering and pipeline condition assessment specialist firm, will perform the review, according to Hastings. More than a dozen firms responded to Skokie’s request for qualifications, but RJN was the only formal submission “due to workload constraints and the highly specialized nature of the work.”

The approved costs associated with RJN’s proposal will not exceed $207,000, per village documents. Funding for the project will come from the village’s water fund.

RJN and the village also negotiated what Hastings described as a linear-foot cost so that Skokie could prioritize and provide select piping segments to allow the proposal to fit within budget.

“This will allow staff to perform this analysis on a multiyear basis and budget for any potential repairs discovered during the analysis,” Hastings said.

Key data provided from the review will offer Skokie likelihood-of-failure metrics, which the village plans to use in risk modeling to help determine and optimize future capital improvement plans.

The item was approved as part of the meeting’s consent agenda, meaning trustees did not devote dedicated time to discussing the matter; however, Trustee Jim Iverson made a point toward the conclusion of the session to highlight the efforts being made.

“The work being done on our water infrastructure is so critically important,” Iverson said, later adding that the meeting’s consent agenda and voucher list highlight “some significant investments that this village is taking to address these critical issues.”

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