Citizen commission blames fiscal board for worsening water crisis

 As community residents took to the streets on Tuesday demanding sustainable solutions to the current water crisis, a citizens group is placing direct responsibility for the crisis on the Financial Oversight and Management Board, arguing that a decade of austerity measures has hollowed out the island water authority and left critical infrastructure in disrepair. (Facebook via ACLU PR)

By THE STAR STAFF

A mid mounting water service failures across the San Juan metropolitan region and new drought warnings, the Citizen Commission for the Audit of Public Credit is placing direct responsibility for the water crisis on the Financial Oversight and Management Board, arguing that a decade of austerity measures has hollowed out the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA) and left critical infrastructure in disrepair.

The statement comes after news that the oversight board imposed an additional $30 million cut to PRASA’s equipment renewal and replacement budget -- the line item used to replace pumps, machinery and pipelines now failing across the system.

José Rivera Santana, urban planner and spokesperson for the Citizen Commission, said the latest cut is part of a long pattern.

“For the past 10 years, the board has suspended and removed millions in local funds from PRASA’s capital improvement program,” Rivera Santana said. “They insisted reconstruction investments should come from federal post‑disaster funds. They also ordered rate hikes, staff reductions, and pushed public‑private partnership projects. Now the country is living with the consequences of those bad decisions.”

PRASA continues to struggle to provide consistent service in the metropolitan area, where multiple breakdowns at filtration plants, pumping stations and major trunk lines -- including the Superaqueduct -- have left entire communities without water for days or even months. Residents and business owners have staged protests as outages persist across San Juan, Bayamón, Guaynabo and surrounding municipalities.

The new budget cut, the commission argues, comes at the worst possible moment.

“Reservoir levels are dropping every day, the Superaqueduct is malfunctioning, and families have gone months without a drop of water,” said attorney Eva Prados Rodríguez, the commission’s executive director. “The biggest problem is that while they keep cutting funds for essential services, there is money in the General Fund to make over $300 million in extra annual payments to bondholders. In the middle of a drought, that is an abuse against the people. The board has to go. It has never been the solution to Puerto Rico’s administrative problems -- it has only intensified them.”

Rivera Santana added that the oversight board’s priorities have consistently favored creditors over residents.

“The board continues to manage the country’s resources in favor of bondholders, all to guarantee repayment to a group of vultures,” he said. “Ten years later, we are seeing the consequences of its austerity measures. The priority must be the thousands of families still without water and facing a drought with no options -- not the bondholders.”

The commission called on the island government and the oversight board to redirect resources toward stabilizing water service and protecting communities as drought conditions worsen.