They Paid $1,700 To Get Water For Their Chicago Community Garden, But City Won’t Turn On The Taps
The city has only issued six permits to community gardens this year after rolling out cumbersome requirements for water use.
By Pascal Sabino
Block Club Chicago
July 9, 2020
Excerpt:
HUMBOLDT PARK — A volunteer-run community garden shelled out $1,700 to meet the city’s new requirements for tapping into a fire hydrant for water.
But halfway through the growing season, the garden still has no access to the water.
Organizers for the Monarch Community Garden, 1050 N. California Ave., have spent months applying for a permit, obtaining new equipment and trying to navigate the byzantine requirements to use city water. But water department officials have been unresponsive, and now the gardeners are being told the city is implementing an entirely new permitting process.
Garden coordinator Ben Lovitt said dozens of gardeners are relying on a generous neighbor for water and it isn’t clear what they have to do to access city water for their plots.
“It’s really frustrating. There’s no guidance. There’s no direction. I don’t know if it’s because of lack of leadership in the department,” Lovitt said. “So essentially we’ve had no water. People have had to carry their own jugs of water … .”
In previous years, tapping the hydrants was simple: The city required only a $5 piece of equipment called a vacuum breaker designed to connect to hydrants and protect the city’s water supply from backflow contamination.
