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In the early years of the 20th Century, Lake County, especially the communities along Lake Michigan, was a booming place. Highland Park and Lake Forest were prosperous, fast-growing suburbs. Waukegan and North Chicago had developed into major manufacturing and commercial centers. And Fort Sheridan and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center were bustling military bases, gearing up for action as World War I loomed.

For the most part, infrastructure improvements kept pace with the growth of these lakefront communities, except in one critical area – wastewater treatment. Most of the towns along Lake Michigan discharged partially treated or untreated sewage and industrial waste directly into the lake, which, of course, was also the main source of drinking water for those same communities.

To address this major health hazard, community leaders from across eastern Lake County came together to urge the creation of a local wastewater treatment agency. In 1911, the Illinois General Assembly enacted legislation to establish the North Shore Sanitary District, which went into operation in 1914.

From its early days of treating sewage for 36,000 residents in six lakefront communities, the NSWRD now serves more than 300,000 people in 17 communities throughout Lake County including: Winthrop Harbor; Zion; Beach Park; Waukegan; Gurnee; Park City; Grayslake; North Chicago; Green Oaks; Lake Bluff; Lake Forest; Highwood; Bannockburn; Deerfield; Highland Park; Fort Sheridan; and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. The NSWRD works in close conjunction with these municipalities, which collect wastewater from residents via local sewer systems, which in turn is transported to the District via over 100 miles of interceptor pipes. The District’s other key missions are to protect local waterways, including the region’s most precious natural resource, Lake Michigan, and develop beneficial uses for treated wastewater (effluent), including enhancing green spaces in the region.

During its first 60 years, the NSWRD operated nearly a dozen wastewater treatment plants. Since 1975, the District has consolidated its operations into three state-of-the-art facilities in Waukegan, Highland Park & Gurnee, which, on average, treat nearly 50 million gallons of wastewater each day. The three plants have all been recognized for excellence by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies.

The District faced perhaps its greatest challenge in the 1960s and 1970s with the enactment of the Federal Water Quality Act of 1965 and the Clean Water Act of 1972. The NSWRD could no longer discharge treated wastewater, or effluent, into Lake Michigan, and it undertook major infrastructure improvements to comply with the new stringent environmental laws. Lakefront treatment plants were converted to pumping stations, which moved wastewater away from Lake Michigan to the three regional treatment plants. Treated effluent is now discharged into the Des Plaines and Skokie rivers and is often cleaner than the water already flowing in those two waterways.

Originally, the five-member Board of Trustees was appointed by the Chief Judge of the Lake County Circuit Court. In 1975, an amendment to the NSSD Act divided the District into five wards and gave voters the right to directly choose Trustees, making it only one of three wastewater treatment agencies in Illinois with a Board directly accountable to the voters – and, of course, customers – of the District.

To better reflect its mission of defending and preserving our natural resources and its dedication to the beneficial reuse of our water resources, the North Shore Sanitary District changed its name to the North Shore Water Reclamation District in 2014. For over a century, the NSWRD has achieved an outstanding record of protecting the environment, especially Lake Michigan, due to both consistently upgrading its infrastructure and the diligence of the clean water professionals who work for the District.