Puerto Rico declares emergency and activates National Guard over water outages

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s governor declared a state of emergency on Wednesday and activated the National Guard after thousands of homes were left without water.

Nearly 180,000 customers were affected at the peak of the outage late last week. As of Wednesday, nearly 3,000 customers were still without water, including nearly a dozen hotels, according to Gov. Jenniffer González.

The problem has angered many on the island of 3.2 million people, especially because the state water and sewer authority has declined to name the company responsible for damaging a main water line while repairing a road last week.

Municipal officials have set up water distribution points and have gone home-to-home to distribute drinking water, with the National Guard now expected to help with those duties.

“As long as I have 11 hotels without water and residents without service, of course we have an emergency,” González said.

The governor also named a special coordinator charged with stabilizing the water system, investigating the water and sewer authority and determining how the incident occurred. He is expected to issue a report in the next 10 days.

González said that the water and sewer authority’s executive director, who has come under fire, would remain in that position.

Before the widespread incident occurred, dozens of communities across Puerto Rico had long experienced issues with water supply.

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