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The absence of clear guidelines from the Puerto Rico Department of Housing to execute the program and poor advice from US firms hired for millions of dollars results in the delay in City Revitalization Program projects.

An audit by the US Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General found irregularities in the payment of $17.1 million that the Federal Emergency Management Agency disbursed to nonprofit organizations for post-disaster work in Puerto Rico.

The inequity in the federal response to both disasters becomes more evident if one compares that nine days after Harvey hit Texas, FEMA approved $141.8 million in individual assistance for victims, while nine days after María, that federal agency barely approved $6.2 million for survivors in Puerto Rico.

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.

González Beiró doesn’t think that his presence in this and other agriculture-related activities could pressure farmers to buy equipment from the company in which he and his wife, Mariliana Bennazar Torres, are direct beneficiaries. The equipment is showcased and promoted at events that he attends or that are sponsored by the Department of Agriculture.

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 […]

Fourteen of the 42 monitors that the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA, in Spanish) used to measure air pollutants harmful to health throughout Puerto Rico are out of service, some for as long as five years, a Center for Investigative Journalism investigation found.

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 audit found that FEMA did not always adequately report and investigate internal allegations of sexual misconduct — including sexual assault, unwelcome sexual advances, and sexual comments — at its operations in the United States and its territories.

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.

Outside the Santiago Veve Calzada School, in Fajardo, a ninth-grade student walks with her mother. It is noon and the three schools that run on this campus on an “interlocking” model   are changing shifts. The youngster took the Baseline diagnostic test, which seeks to measure the academic lag of students. When   asked about […]

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 […]

The corporation’s first reliability report confirms that it took almost twice as long to restore power to customers in its first quarter of operations, compared to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.

On the fourth anniversary of Hurricane María, only 1% of the funds have been disbursed for permanent work projects.

The agency failed to comply with a preparedness and response protocol that it had agreed with the US Government to deal with such emergencies.

A year and four months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced a $39.5 million obligation to rebuild the Susana Centeno Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Vieques, which Hurricane María destroyed in 2017, the Infrastructure Financing Authority (AFI), the agency to which the Municipality delegated the task of managing the project earlier this year, […]