Earlier this week, a group of Chicago suburbs announced plans to pump and distribute Lake Michigan water. This would put them in competition with the water supplied by the city of Chicago:

The DuPage commission alone is paying Chicago’s Department of Water Management $130 million this year, commission Chair Jim Zay told the Tribune Publishing-owned Daily Herald. The DuPage consortium is Chicago’s single largest wholesale customer, accounting for 15% of the city water system’s annual operating revenue, according to Fitch Ratings.

The threat to Chicago is several years away; the DuPage commission is contracted to buy water from the city until 2041. But that’s how long it would take to secure approvals, financing and build the competing system anyway.

The backers of the suburban plan complain that Chicago in the past has raised its rates suddenly and exorbitantly and that more recently the city’s service hasn’t been sufficiently reliable. “They don’t put anything back into the system; that’s the problem,” the Herald quoted Zay as saying. “This year we’ll pay them $130 million, and they put nothing in for infrastructure.”…

And if these suburban officials conclude that the risk of continuing to do business with Chicago for generations to come is greater than executing this complex and expansive infrastructure project, that’s their prerogative. To our minds, it’s not an easy call.

This reminds me of two features of American suburbs:

1. One leading reason suburban communities stopped approving annexation of their community into big cities in the late 1800s had to do with utilities. Once costs of supplying electricity, water, gas, and other needed resources decreased, suburbs developed their own systems rather than join the city to enjoy the benefits of their systems.
2. Suburbs and their residents like local government. Even as the competing suburban water system would be administered by suburban officials, they would prefer that local control rather than having the big city control the water. This does not mean all the suburbs will agree about how to go about the water business but they probably believe they would rather have decisions in the hands of suburbanites rather than city people.

In other words, this move to have suburbs supply Lake Michigan water is part of longstanding patterns. Yes, it involves a lot of money and effort. But the suburbs think it is worthwhile compared to relying on the big city.