Storm water claims may be an emerging small-scale form of litigation driven by climate change.  In Pennsylvania, like many parts of the country, a changing climate has increased the frequency of heavy rains and the intensity of rainfall events. More rain falls in shorter periods, and a storm with a 1% chance of occurring in a year (the hundred-year storm) has become larger.

The water has to go somewhere. Buildings, pavement and grading alter where the water can go and how fast it goes there. In cities, the streams into which the water originally flowed have often been enclosed as storm sewers. Indeed, you may have seen an interesting suggestion in the wake of the Ida flooding in New York that the city open up some of those sewers.  See Sanderson, “Let the Streams Run Free,” N.Y. Times, p. SR7 (Oct. 3, 2021).

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