Rafael R. Díaz Torres

The US Army Corps of Engineers clings to the canalization alternative because it is the least expensive way to address the problem.

Dozens of municipalities have privatized their public nuisances management programs and let companies handle public nuisances’ determinations, appraisals, legal representation in courts of the expropriation processes, and even seeing through the sales of expropriated properties.

The privatization proposals for the docks in the southern part of the islet of San Juan will bring changes to the area's coastal ecosystem, vehicular access, public services, and affordable housing, according to residents and experts.

When looking at the proposals for the area that begins in Old San Juan and connects with Puerta de Tierra, Isla Grande, Miramar, Santurce and Condado, the creation of a corridor promoted by private companies for the rich and tourists is evident.

The Department of Transportation and Public Works informed that 16 bridges suffered damage after Hurricane Fiona struck, but a Center for Investigative Journalism investigation found that this number is wrong and that, from those 16, nine bridges had their strength and stability seriously or severely affected prior to the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico on September 18.

The procedure for community aqueducts to legalize their franchises and maintain their operation is so complicated, bureaucratic, and devoid of technical support that it discourages communities from formalizing the systems that carries water to their homes because of the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority’s inability to provide the service.

Of the 242 community aqueduct systems legally registered in Puerto Rico as franchises, 31% have not requested recovery funds for the damages caused to infrastructure by Hurricanes Irma and María in September 2017, according to data from the Government’s Central Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3). Although the reasons are different for each community […]

Claribel Millán played with the Puerto Rico National Softball Team during the 1970s and represented the island in the 1974 World Cup held in Connecticut. Her dedication to her national colors was in constant friction with what she says she was discriminated for — being a lesbian. She remembers that the federation leaders and directors […]

The Department of Health, responsible for inspecting and approving the emergency evacuation plans of all the island’s hospitals, only keeps them for the three hospitals that it runs. The agency’s Deputy Secretary’s Office for the Regulation and Accreditation of Health Facilities (SARAFS, in Spanish) does not keep a copy of the evacuation plans that it […]

The obstacles to guaranteeing services to kidney patients are still there, as LUMA does not give the highest priority when restoring energy to dialysis centers, nor has a patient registry or a comprehensive plan been created to serve the population with the most deaths after Hurricane María.

Just over a mile of coastline separates Pocita Julio Barroso Valentín and Kikita Beach from the most exclusive beaches on the grounds of the Embassy Suites Hotel and the controlled access neighborhoods of the Dorado del Mar residential complex. All those beaches are in the Higuillar neighborhood in Dorado. “La Pocita” and Kikita Beach, located […]

In a virtual conference coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme, in which the new findings on sargassum are presented, it is unexpectedly revealed that a research and production center that works with this algae is located in Cataño, a town across the San Juan Bay. Via Zoom, Jason Cole, Executive Vice President of Innovations […]

On Alfonso XII Street in the Punta Santiago, a coastal neighborhood in Humacao, 62-year-old Bermuda Vázquez points toward the beach that is blanketed with brown seaweed, known as sargassum. Although it was a day off in midsummer to commemorate the emancipation of slavery in the United States, beachgoers were nowhere to be seen. “The thing […]

Chunks of cement, boulders, construction waste, and some debris separate the coastal bluff in the Barrio Obrero community of Arecibo from the ocean-view car wash where Christian works. The man, who has lived in this community all his life, said how the neighbors have tried to find options to tackle the accelerated coastal erosion rate […]

When they get to college, more than a few students associate geography with simple exercises in memorizing places that they will have to identify on a map. Many were taught that way in middle and high school. Only some risk taking at least one undergraduate course in geography, without imagining that this decision will enable […]

Gov. Pedro Pierluisi’s administration is seemingly lacking a defined public policy on who should take the reins in handling the current climate crisis. While the University of Puerto Rico and the Secretary of State, Lawrence Seilhamer, favor that the Committee of Experts and Advisors on Climate Change be chaired by a scientist without direct ties […]