Chicago Region Needs More Public Funding for Flood Protection

Voters across five Chicago-area counties said yes to conservation funding at the ballot box, and a private foundation is now pushing state and local governments to match that mandate with real public dollars.

Arnold Randall, executive director of the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, didn’t mince words about what comes next. “Given the scale required to deliver nature-based flood protection for the communities that need it the most, private investment only goes so far,” Randall said, according to reporting in the Chicago Sun-Times. “The reality is that public funding will be needed.”

That’s the argument Randall and Rebecca Judd, the foundation’s senior conservation program officer, have been making to anyone who’ll listen. They’re not wrong.

Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties all approved measures in the most recent election cycle backing higher property taxes or bond authority for county forest preserve districts. Five counties. Zero defeats. In a political climate where tax measures fail all the time, that’s a notable signal about where voters actually stand on green space and flood protection.

The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation is one of the few private funders in the Chicago region with a sustained focus on land conservation. It works across wetlands, prairies, forests and open corridors throughout the metro. Randall and Judd argue that conserved land isn’t just scenery. It’s infrastructure. Wetlands absorb stormwater before it backs up into basements. Restored prairies slow sheet runoff across acres of otherwise impervious surface. Urban tree canopies intercept rainfall before it ever reaches the pavement below. They clean air, filter water, knock down urban heat, and give South Side residents the same access to nature that wealthier neighborhoods have long taken for granted.

The economic math works too. Conserved land that soaks up floodwater reduces what governments pay to repair roads, homes and businesses after every major storm. It also takes pressure off the region’s aging sewer system, a system that’s already stretched beyond its design capacity.

Climate isn’t waiting. Stronger thunderstorms are hitting Chicago more often, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District can’t keep up through infrastructure alone. The Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, better known as the Deep Tunnel, was an engineering marvel when it was built. It can’t handle what 2026 storms are producing. Neighborhoods from the South Side outward have taken repeated hits, basement flooding that recurs after every heavy rain, street flooding that closes arterials for hours. That’s not a gray infrastructure problem you can tunnel your way out of anymore.

That’s where green solutions become less optional. But green solutions cost money, and the funding has never matched the scale of the problem in Chicago-area communities.

Randall and Judd want a dedicated state wetland protection program and a permanent Illinois conservation fund. Both proposals gained urgency after federal environmental spending started contracting. Washington’s retreat from environmental investment isn’t abstract out here. It means Cook County and the state of Illinois either step into the gap or communities without strong local tax bases get left behind. It’s that direct.

The ballot results offer a political opening. Residents in five counties didn’t have to approve these measures. They chose to. That kind of consistent public backing across a politically mixed metro region is the argument Randall needs when he walks into Springfield and makes the case that conservation funding isn’t a niche environmental priority. It’s a mainstream budget question tied to property values, public safety, and the cost of flood damage that the region keeps absorbing year after year.

Private foundations can seed projects. They can fund pilots and prove models. What they can’t do is write checks at the scale required to protect whole watersheds and dozens of neighborhoods at once. Conserved land and restored wetlands don’t get built across a metro area on foundation grants alone.

The votes are on record. The floods aren’t stopping. Randall’s ask is straightforward: match what the public has already decided it wants.