Years of underinvestment and inadequate maintenance of key infrastructure have been compounded by a drought that threatens to trigger partial rationing
Residents and businesses in the Machuchal neighborhood and along Loíza Street in San Juan have had dry water pipes for more than half the days that have passed this year. As of Friday, the total stood at 118 days, meticulously recorded in a digital log maintained by nearly 100 residents of this area, located in one of the most tourist-heavy parts of Puerto Rico’s capital.
“No water again,” “It’s hard to live in this neighborhood and not move,” people wrote in the tool.
Service interruptions are so frequent that they far exceed the 22 days of power outages that, over the past decade, have become a widespread headache across this U.S. territory.
“I’ve lived here 26 years, and I had never seen a situation like this,” says Ángeles Acosta, a 75-year-old clinical psychologist. She says everyday tasks like cooking and cleaning become an ordeal every time service is interrupted. Whenever there is even a “trickle” coming from the garden tap, she fills large containers and stores them in a tank she keeps in the bathroom of her third-floor apartment. “I put all the water there, and then I go back down to get more,” she says.
The outages have been so frequent this year that she “spent $2,000 on a cistern because I don’t have room inside the apartment. I have to bring water from a small apartment at the back, on the roof. And for that I had to buy a pump, a pressure booster… But not everyone can afford that,” she admits.
Acosta and other residents have organized themselves into the coalition Exigimos Agua (We Demand Water) and have called a demonstration for August 4. One of its leaders is Alfredo Cuyar, who believes that the lack of experience among some employees of the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (AAA) in operating water valves is a key factor behind the supply problems affecting this particular area. Cuyar says the issue stems from management changes at the AAA following the start of Governor Jenniffer González’s administration in 2025. The valves, he explains, must be operated manually, and that is not being done.
“This group of employees that has come in has a theory: that the water system should operate on its own, as if it were a modern network that automatically readjusts itself, and that they shouldn’t have to use staff to open and close valves. Because of that mismanagement, this area has repeatedly been left without water. […] We’re desperate,” says Cuyar.
The issue even reached the courts. San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero, a member of the governing party, sued the water utility in an effort to force a solution to the recurring service disruptions.
Luis González, head of the AAA, says the problems affecting several communities in the capital are part of a broader pattern of deterioration in the archipelago’s water infrastructure. He blames the situation on the fact that improvement and maintenance works “that should have been carried out years ago” were never completed.
As the interruptions have worsened, Governor González has said that infrastructure improvement projects totaling at least $7 billion are either underway or in the planning stages.
What is happening in parts of San Juan is only one element of a cocktail of large-scale supply problems that threaten an economy tightly overseen for a decade by a fiscal control board imposed by Washington.
For years, water production at key treatment plants has declined as investment fell amid the economic crisis. Essential maintenance has not been carried out on a critical water transfer system that supplies northern Puerto Rico and has become a major source of water for the metropolitan area, the island’s economic engine. Millions of gallons of water are lost every day through what are commonly known as “salideros" or “leaks” and what an official report classifies as ”non-revenue water,” resulting in annual losses of $98 million, based on the cost of producing that water.
Compounding these problems, this summer has brought a shortage of rainfall in areas containing key reservoirs, leaving 85% of Puerto Rico under moderate or severe drought conditions, according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, and putting thousands of Puerto Ricans on edge over the risk of partial water rationing amid soaring temperatures.
EL PAÍS spoke at length with engineer Carlos Pesquera to understand the state of Puerto Rico’s water infrastructure and the steps that have been taken, and still need to be taken, to improve it. Pesquera, a member of the governing party who is not currently part of the administration, is intimately familiar with the island’s water system. In the summer of 2025, Governor González commissioned him to prepare a report with recommendations after a series of breakdowns at facilities serving the metropolitan area. Months later, a failure shut down for days a massive pipeline, known as the Superaqueduct, which supplies water to 15 municipalities.