Why Garden Hills floods and how new infrastructure could help
Garden Hills' stormwater basin on the east side of Hedge Park on June 4, 2026. Lyric Roy/Illinois Student Newsroom
For years, flooding was a problem for the Garden Hills, where thousands of people live in north Champaign near Interstate 74.
Flooding issues in Garden Hills and other low-lying communities have the potential for becoming worse as rainfall intensifies due to climate change.
The City of Champaign is addressing these issues through the Garden Hills Neighborhood drainage project.
Illinois State Climatologist with the Prairie Research Institute, Trent Ford, student journalist in the Illinois Public Media newsroom, Lyric Roy, Associate Professor at the Department of Climate, Metrology and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Deanna Hence and Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Ashlynn Stillwell discuss the flooding issues and new infrastructure in Garden Hills.
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