The Farmers Insurance Company is suing 98 Illinois towns, Cook County, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, asserting they were insufficiently prepared to deal with the effects of global warming that allegedly caused heavy rains and flooding in those areas last spring, damaging property, which led to expensive claims against the company.
“During the past 40 years, climate change in Cook County has caused rains to be of greater volume, greater intensity and greater duration than pre-1970 rainfall history evidenced,” reads the lawsuit, adding that the infrastructure systems used by the towns to manage the heavy rainfall apparently are “inaccurate and obsolete.”
“This defendant knew or should have known that climate change in Cook County has resulted in greater rainfall volume, greater rainfall intensity and greater rainfall duration than pre-1970 rainfall history evidenced, resulting in greater stormwater runoff from a rainfall with Cook County and its Watersheds,” state the plaintiffs.
As a result, the “defendant knew that, because of climate change-causing increased rainfall,” it “had to increase stormwater storage capacity of its stormwater sewer system(s) to prevent sewer water invasions,” claim the plaintiffs.
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