Prospect Heights Natural Resources Commission

January 26th, 2023 - Kevin Griebenow, P. E.

A Zoom Presentation 7:00 - 8:30

"Understanding Floods and Water Management -  How Much is it Going to Rain and When Will the Water Come Roaring Through Here?"

Hydrology, the movement of water across land is important to the history of our location and the shaping of the land. The city of Chicago (and Prospect Heights) is here because of hydrology.

Join us as we welcome Kevin Griebenow, P. E. as he will present his highly informative presentation on Hydrometeorology and Hydrology and how it effects us.

This presentation is a Zoom presentation with a start time of 7:00 PM.

Nature Speaks is free admission but registration is necessary.

The Library will send you a Zoom link as the even approaches.

Rare rain events like those in St. Louis, Missouri, Dallas, Texas and Aurora, Illinois will be presented. These storms were all 100-year events or more. We will look at stream and river discharge and the science of measuring and modeling it. This starts with precipitation.

The extreme precipitation events will be discussed and how they are used to develop design storms for sizing civil structures like storm drains, bridges, and dams.  With the rainwater hitting the ground, it can sink into or flow across it.  The different mechanisms of these two possibilities will be examined.  With the water flowing across the ground, it will accumulate into a rill, gully, creek, stream and river.  When the capacity of these land features is exceeded, we say flooding is occurring.  With data from a stream gage, flow duration and  flood frequency curves will be displayed and discussed.  The issues of reducing flooding using levees and reservoirs will be explored.

Kevin is a supervisor at the Chicago Regional Office, Division of Dam Safety and Inspections, with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). For more than 25 years, he has been involved with inspecting and assessing the safety of all kinds of dams.  This work has included reviewing numerous site specific Probable Maximum Precipitation studies, Probable Maximum Flood studies, stability analysis leading to the installation of post-tensioned anchors and the construction of large powerhouses at US Army Corps of Engineers’ Lock and Dams on the Ohio River. Prior to the FERC, he worked on the National Flood Insurance Program at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and was a project manager and hydraulic engineer at the Chicago District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.  He joined the Peace Corps building water supply projects in villages in Yemen after graduating from the University of Minnesota.

For more than 25 years, Kevin is a docent with the Chicago Architecture Center where he gives tours to the public and school groups and presentations on the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and Structural Engineering.

The Prospect Heights Watershed