Heavy rains late on Wednesday forced the Chesterton wastewater treatment plant to bypass untreated or partially treated sewage into the Little Calumet River, the Utility said.

Chief Operator Dick Condon told the Chesterton Tribune this morning that the combined sewer overflow (CSO) began around 11 p.m. and lasted approximately 45 minutes. “It was short term but a lot of water,” he said.

Condon said that flow data have not yet been downloaded and it’s impossible to say just how many gallons were bypassed.

Condon did say that between 8:30 a.m. Wednesday and 8:30 a.m. today a total of 1.67 inches of rain were recorded at the wastewater treatment plant.

A CSO occurs in heavy rain, when the flow of stormwater from unseparated sanitary sewer lines--or stormwater which has otherwise infiltrated the sanitary sewer system through breaches in the lines--overwhelms the wastewater treatment plant.

Meanwhile, the Town of Chesterton appears to have escaped last night’s storm relatively unscathed. Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg noted that one tree on public right-of-way, in the area of 24th Place and Idaho Street, fell across a NIPSCO line strung from a Verizon pole. A crew was in the process of removing the tree late this morning.

That tree, however, was the only publicly-owned one to be toppled by the storm, Schnadenberg said, although some large limbs in places did end up on the ground.

South Shore commuter trains were running pretty much on schedule by around 8 a.m. today, after severe weather blew a tree across power lines serving the track signals which control train movement.

Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District Chief Operator Joe Black told the Chesterton Tribune this morning that the large cottonwood tree toppled sometime between 12 and 1 a.m. east of the Ogden Dunes station. The loss of power caused all of the track signals served by the power lines to go red by default, delaying westbound trains between the Dune Park and Miller stations by 10 to 15 minutes.

Those lines belong to the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, Black noted, and repairs could not begin until a NIPSCO crew had removed the tree and re-strung the wire.

By 8 a.m. “most of the issues had been worked out,” Black said, and Train No. 14 westbound to Chicago was the first train of the morning expected to run on schedule.

Black did note that a problem on Thursday affecting Train No. 111, departing Millennium Station at 4:28 p.m., has been resolved, after the pantagraph on the last car of that train was damaged, apparently getting snagged in the overhead concatenary wire where the South Shore line splits from the Metra line in the area of the Kensington Station.

No. 111 managed to make it as far as the Hegewisch Station, where passengers were offloaded onto eastbound Train No. 113. In that area, Black said, the South Shore runs a double track and subsequent westbound trains were able to shift to the eastbound track and go around No. 111.

There were, however, delays, Black said.