Bronx elected officials with ties to Puerto Rico are sounding the alarm over the territory’s failing energy infrastructure amid a recent two-day island-wide blackout.
Although power was restored to nearly all 1.5 million customers by the morning of April 18, the problem goes far beyond a single incident. The island has a notoriously unreliable energy system and has seen little improvement since Hurricane Maria in 2017, when Congress allocated billions to upgrade and repair the grid and set up solar-powered backup that can run when the grid fails.
Just before the latest blackout, and in anticipation of the summer months, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres signed on to an April 15 letter to the Trump administration calling for increased emergency generation for Puerto Rico. On social media, he called the island’s weak power system “a humanitarian crisis.”
The island is expected to experience electricity shortfalls on 90 days between June and October, the letter said.
Other elected officials harshly criticized the federal government for underinvesting in the U.S. territory.
Assembly Member Karines Reyes said on social media that the lack of reliable energy infrastructure showed an “ongoing federal disregard for the island.”
“It is unacceptable that since Hurricane Maria, little to no progress has been made to improve Puerto Rico’s power system,” she said in an April 17 Instagram post.
Reyes, who chairs the New York State Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, called for increased local and federal collaboration and deployment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
State Sen. Luis Sepúlveda said in an April 17 post that the frequent outages, which most recently affected hospitals and even the airport, are “not a natural accident” but rather “a direct consequence of failed governance and decades of neglect.”
The territory’s Republican Governor Jenniffer González Colón, who previously served as the island’s sole representative to the U.S. Congress, has shown “a disturbing lack of leadership, urgency and empathy,” Sepúlveda said.
González Colón posted on social media that “Puerto Ricans deserve a reliable energy grid — not excuses” and thanked Lee Zeldin, who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, for pledging help following the latest massive blackout. But Sepúlveda said the federal government under President Trump has “systematically ignored, underfunded and dismissed” the territory.
“What we are witnessing is not simply a power outage but a moral and administrative collapse that has left millions in the dark, literally and figuratively,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson issued a statement in support of the residents of Puerto Rico struggling with the outage.
“Praying for our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters as they face yet another power outage,” Gibson said. “Here in the Bronx—home to one of the largest Puerto Rican communities in the diaspora—we stand in full solidarity with our neighbors on the island as they navigate this crisis.”
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
