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Mary Buchanan, 68, stands outside her home in West Garfield Park on March 21, 2024, examining the recent construction to her front lawn. She paid $12,000 to install a check valve to prevent waste water from flowing into her home the next time her neighborhood floods. Her basement was significantly damaged in July 2023 after a major storm. Credit: Victor Hilitski, for the Illinois Answers Project

Meredith Newman is an embedded investigative reporter with the Illinois Answers Project. Before joining the newsroom, she worked at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland. She is a graduate of Syracuse University and is originally from Evanston, Illinois.