It Could Happen Here Weekly 258

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Cool Zone Media.

Robert Evans (0:03)

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know, this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Carlos Barrios-Pelanco (0:28)

Hello, you're listening to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. Today's here is Puerto Rico and the it is the water crisis. My name is Carlos and I'll be your host for today.

Over the past year and a half, Puerto Rico has been experiencing a pretty bad water crisis where at its peak, about a half a million people didn't have adequate access to running water. This was mainly in the metro area which consists of the capital city of San Juan and surrounding municipalities. The problem was originally caused by the archipelago's water infrastructure breaking down because of years of mismanagement and failure to provide adequate maintenance. Then the lack of water in some areas was compounded by a pretty intense drought throughout the middle of this year. July was the driest month on record in San Juan in more than 120 years and in August more than 60% of the archipelago was experiencing either extreme or severe drought. While the glut of the water problems have now subsided, the government has done little to deal with the underlying infrastructure problems that caused the crisis in the first place. Instead, when the drought began earlier this year, the government, with a little help from friendly media, was able to shift the blame for their fuckups onto the drought and the dry conditions caused by El Niño.

Then, when it started to rain in mid-September and reservoir levels started to go up while the amount of areas affected by drought started going down, they were able to escape by almost entirely without any consequences, with very little mention of actually fixing the problems. This water crisis is built on top of many other societal problems that Puerto Ricans face daily. Like crumbling electrical and healthcare systems, corrupt local politicians, continued colonialism by the US., and a whole host of other things. All these problems intermingle and coalesce into the much bigger crisis that's bubbling under the surface, but the water issue is really emblematic of the problems we have as an archipelago, because the pro-statehood new progressive party government's solution has been to metaphorically hold everything together with duct tape and hope people forget the problem ever existed only for it to come back to bite us in the ass while politicians talk about remaining calm and blame anything but themselves.

Much of the archipelago has been lulled into a sense of security with the water crisis because it's currently raining a lot and most reservoirs are close enough to full that water is flowing freely. However, just because things are doesn't mean that they always will be. And as we approach the end of the rainy season, as the year ends and a new year begins, it's entirely possible that some part of the archipelago could face water rationing in the near future. In fact, at time of recording, one of the reservoirs managed by the public water utility, the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, is slowly approaching the quote unquote control level, at which historically, Praça has instituted water rationing to prevent a reservoir from going out of service, according to El Nuevo Dia. However, Praça told ND that they are not currently considering rationing, although that might change by the time you're listening to this episode. So to lay some groundwork before I talk about when the crisis was at its worst over the summer, I have to start in July of 2025, when several neighborhoods in San Juan, like Isla Verde and Machuchal, started losing running water or having it severely limited. The experiences these communities face would prove prophetic for what awaited many of us the following year.

At the start of October, I spoke to Dara Rivera, co-founder of La Colisión Exigimos Agua, We Demand Water Coalition, which demands reliable water services for all, for water leaks to be fixed and government transparency, about what her neighborhood had been experiencing for more than a year. Although the water situation had more or less stabilized by the time we talked, the memories and exhaustion were still fresh. As a quick note, Dara and I spoke in Spanish, but Abu from the Cool Zone team is reading a translation of the interview here and throughout the episode.