Hey, Hollywood, Boricuas need you.
On Friday, more than 180,000 households and businesses across San Juan and six neighboring municipalities woke up to dry faucets. For 48 hours at a stretch, on a rotating schedule with no end date, they will go without water. Roughly half a million people are being asked to live without the most basic need of a functioning society, and the silence around it is heartbreaking.
The images coming out of the island should stop social media users in their tracks. Residents are filling buckets and jugs before their windows close. Elderly neighbors are depending on others to haul five-gallon jugs up apartment stairwells in punishing heat. Gov. Jennifer González calls the situation “out of our hands” and warns that the shutoffs could stretch to 72 hours if the rain does not come. July was the driest month San Juan has recorded in more than 120 years.
This is not an “act of God,” but you already knew that.
The island’s water authority loses well over half the water it treats before it ever reaches a tap, much of it bleeding out of pipes that have gone decades without adequate investment. Communities in and around the capital logged more than 100 days of outages this year before the rationing even began. The San Juan mayor sued the water authority in the spring. Residents have taken to the streets because they know that water is a right.
