CITIES WATCH : Pay Now, or Later

The “finished basement” is to Chicago what the redwood deck might be to Southern California. Under the small but sturdy brick bungalows of a metropolis that likes to call itself “the city that works,” the working class holes up during the long Midwestern winter for New Year’s Eve parties and Valentine’s Day parties, not to mention precinct meetings and election-day vote-casting. In the nation’s third-largest city, much happens below ground level in low-ceilinged, pine-paneled rooms with a whiff of mold in the air.

Unfortunately, Chicago has a high water table. Much of the beautiful lakefront is actually reclaimed marshland. When the rains come, the water hasn’t far to rise before it’s rising into the house. The flooded basement, as a result, is as much a part of Chicago life as the finished basement; and this week that city is coping with the worst basement flood in history, an apocalyptic discharge from the Chicago River, via abandoned coal delivery tunnels, into the labyrinth beneath the skyscrapers of the Loop.

Could the disaster have been avoided? Yes, says Mayor Richard M. Daley. A $10,000 repair could have spared the city a repair-and-cleanup bill that will now total many millions, not to speak of the cost of interrupted downtown business.

Daley is blaming--and firing--his underlings, but we wonder: Did somebody’s “tough budget decision” eliminate the repair money? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Sadly, the country is listening to tough accountants when what it needs is a word with a tough janitor.