SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – The federal oversight board that oversees Puerto Rico’s economy said Wednesday it will help speed up projects to repair the island’s crumbling power grid as widespread power outages continue.
Only $1.2 billion of more than $17 billion authorized by the U.S. Congress to stabilize and improve the reliability of the U.S. territory’s grid has been spent in the seven years since Hurricane Maria hit the island as a Category 4 storm, said Robert Mujica, the government’s executive director.
“We need to move faster,” he said at a government public meeting. “The current situation … is not acceptable.”
A growing number of Puerto Ricans, frustrated by outages, are calling on the U.S. territory’s government to terminate its contract with Luma Energy, which operates electricity transmission and distribution. Several gubernatorial candidates have echoed this call, but Mujica rejected such a move.
“We can’t go back to the old system,” he said, acknowledging that Puerto Rico has “too many blackouts.”
He added that if a viable alternative is not immediately available, it would only lead to further delays. He characterized talk of canceling the contract as “premature” and said officials must prioritize projects that can be completed immediately, as he urged federal agencies to speed up approvals and waivers.
“Every day that these funds are not used is another day that the people of Puerto Rico are at risk of being without electricity,” Mujica said.
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, who attended the meeting, said more than $17 billion was “really available” only in mid-2021 and that his administration has been “very creative in dealing with the bureaucratic hurdles of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
He said his administration has given money to contractors as one way to speed up the reconstruction of the grid that was destroyed by Maria in September 2017.
Overall, Pierluisi said the government has spent 46 percent of FEMA funds on Maria-related reconstruction projects.
Not everyone can afford generators or solar panels on the island, which is home to 3.2 million people and has a poverty rate of more than 40 percent. So far, around 120,000 solar power systems have been installed on the roof.
The effort to move towards renewable energy on the island, where fossil fuels produce about 94 percent of electricity, has brought the Net Metering Act under scrutiny. In late July, the government filed a lawsuit challenging changes to the law that reimburse solar-equipped households for their grid fees.
When the government met on Wednesday, protesters gathered outside to demand it withdraw the lawsuit, and organizers left a petition with 7,000 signatures.
Mujica said that as a result of the changes, the independence of Puerto Rico’s energy agency is “under attack.”
The amendment prohibits the agency from making changes to the net metering program until 2031 at the earliest, e.g.
The government has announced that it will not try to end net metering as claimed, nor will it make any changes to the net metering program. It stated that if it wins the lawsuit, there will be no changes to the island’s current rooftop solar program.
The lawsuit says the net metering terms would affect demand for the utility’s service and revenue for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority as it struggles to restructure more than $9 billion in debt.
