Puerto Rico faces over 100 days of water outages amid aging infrastructure

Residents of San Juan's Machuchal district have endured 118 days without water this year, prompting protests and legal action against the island's water utility.

In San Juan's tourist-heavy Machuchal neighborhood, water pipes have been dry for 118 days this year, according to a resident-maintained log. The frequent interruptions have forced residents like 75-year-old psychologist Ángeles Acosta to buy cisterns and pumps, a cost many cannot afford. Activists from Exigimos Agua, led by Alfredo Cuyar, argue that new AAA employees lack the skill to manually operate valves, a problem they link to management shifts under Governor Jenniffer González since 2025.

San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero has taken legal action against the utility, while AAA head Luis González points to decades-old neglect of the water system. Governor González says $7 billion in upgrades are underway, yet engineers warn that the aging Superaqueduct pipeline, which supplies fifteen municipalities, has no redundancy and suffers from unknown leak rates. The broader crisis is amplified by a severe drought affecting 85% of the island, raising concerns about future rationing and economic fallout.