Some of the city’s detritus made its way out to the two-mile mark in Lake Michigan, then flowed back into the new water intake system. There was talk of pushing intakes out even farther, but ever longer intake tunnels would never be enough to keep up with the city’s growth. A bigger, bolder solution was needed, and so an even more ambitious idea was proposed: reverse the entire Chicago River. Instead of waste from the river flowing into Lake Michigan, clean water from the lake would flow into the city. This would, once and for all, solve the pollution problem by pushing it downstream to the
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