Puerto Rico is rationing water, but many residents stopped trusting the tap long before the drought
Drought and a ruptured pipeline have forced Puerto Rico into revolving water shut-offs. For many people, the disruption started years earlier, as did loss of faith in the utility.
Residents of San Juan, Puerto Rico and nearby areas have been facing a two-day water shortage since August 7, 2026, due to the island's ongoing drought. The water rationing, implemented by the government-owned water company PRASA, has been in place for over a month. PRASA is currently investing in leak detection, but has only managed a 6% reduction in water losses since 2019.
The utility's budget is certified by the financially appointed Oversight and Management Board, which shows that PRASA lost nearly half of the 513 million gallons of water produced daily to leaks in fiscal year 2024. The lack of transparency on how many households are affected by the outages, combined with PRASA's prioritization of projects reimbursable by FEMA over the small pipes where most of the water is lost, has led to widespread mistrust of the water system.
Written by urgent.news from The Conversation's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
