Puerto Rico Water Crisis: 10 Families, One Condo, No Water

On many days over the past year, the tidy three-story condo building on Pomarrosa Street in central San Juan, Puerto Rico, has gotten no running water at all. On other days, just a trickle reaches the faucets—and only in the ground-floor apartments, according to NPR.

The 10 families who call this building home have become emblematic of a crisis now engulfing the U.S. territory: a severe drought layered on top of decades of infrastructure neglect has left hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans without reliable access to running water.

A Community Adapting to Scarcity

When water flows, the families who live above ground level bring their jugs down to Sonia Palacios’ first-story patio and fill them from her garden hose. Palacios, a retired lawyer, has adjusted her entire life around the unpredictable water supply.

“You’re used to having water,” Palacios told NPR. “And so to not have water is like a handicap. I feel like there’s nothing I can do.”

She now bathes by scooping water from a plastic barrel in her shower, wipes soap off dishes with paper towels before rinsing so she can reuse the water in her garden, and buys bottled water from the supermarket for drinking—a practice she finds deeply frustrating.

“But why do I have to be buying water from the supermarket when I’m supposed to be drinking water from the faucet?” she asked. “How come I have to do that?”

Her neighbor, Norma Peña, says the uncertainty has reshaped daily life. “If you’re having trouble sleeping at 4 am, you check the faucet,” she said. “The first thing you do when you wake up is check the faucet.”

Yoamadil Cabán, another resident, worries that water scarcity is becoming normalized. “That fact is normalized,” she said. “And it cannot be normalized.” She added: “Where’s the accountability? Who assumes responsibility for the water that is lost?”

A Drought of Historic Proportions

The situation has escalated dramatically this summer. July 2026 was San Juan’s driest month in more than 120 years and the second hottest on record, with just 0.54 inches of precipitation—about 9% of average levels, as CBS News reported. Roughly 68% of Puerto Rico is now in drought conditions, with 36% classified as severe.

Gov. Jenniffer González Colón declared a State of Emergency on July 31, and on August 7 the government began implementing a rationing plan affecting more than 180,000 homes and businesses across seven municipalities, including San Juan. Customers were divided into two groups that alternate having water cut for at least 48 hours at a time—potentially leaving affected households without water on as many as four days a week, according to Al Jazeera.

The strategically important Carraizo reservoir in Trujillo Alto, which supplies water to at least seven municipalities including San Juan, has dropped to critically low levels. The Sergio Cuevas filtration plant normally captures 80 million gallons daily but has been reduced to about 60 million gallons, as Metro Puerto Rico reported.

Infrastructure Failure: The Root of the Crisis

While the governor has blamed the drought, many residents and experts point to a deeper problem: the island’s water infrastructure has been crumbling for decades. The government’s own data shows that 60-65% of Puerto Rico’s treated water is lost to leaks and other inefficiencies before reaching homes, according to BBC Mundo.

For more than three decades, the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA) has struggled with fiscal crises, operational problems, failed privatizations, and poor planning, as El Nuevo Dia detailed in an extensive analysis of the utility’s decline.

Alfredo Cuyar, who leads a coalition of citizens calling for accountability, told NPR that the problems began when the governor fired longtime leaders of the water utility and installed people unfamiliar with the aging network of pipes and valves. “All of the experience, knowledge, expertise went out the door,” he said. “Well, we’ve been in a crisis ever since. For 13 months, we’ve been in the crisis.”

Communities in San Juan have documented at least 118 days in 2026 with repeated water outages before the formal rationing measures began. One resident, Dhara Rivera, reported 123 interrupted days without water in her neighborhood over the past year, as KASU/NPR reported.

Government Response and Accountability Questions

In response to the crisis, the government has activated the National Guard to distribute water and announced a $1.825 million investment to hire private crews to address leaks more rapidly, with a dedicated hotline for reporting leaks, according to the San Juan Daily Star. The government has also expanded water distribution with National Guard tanker trucks and high-capacity vehicles, as the San Juan Daily Star reported.

Gov. González Colón has acknowledged the infrastructure problems but maintains that the current crisis is driven by weather. “We’re facing a reality that’s not within our control,” she said. “It’s not raining.”

However, critics argue that the drought only exposed what was already broken. As Newsweek reported, the White House has stated the situation is being closely monitored but has received no requests from FEMA for assistance, and President Trump has not issued any statement on the crisis.

Environmental researcher Catalina de Onis argues the current shutoffs must be understood in the context of Puerto Rico’s long history of “racial capitalism, neoliberalism, and US and Spanish empire building,” noting that “massive cuts to public services, privatization, and disinvestment have propelled very damaging fossil fuel reliance that perpetuates the drought crisis.”

Economic Impact and Daily Struggles

The crisis extends far beyond residential neighborhoods. Small businesses in Old San Juan have been hit hard, with some closing during rationing windows. One San Juan business owner reported spending $300-$500 daily to fill cisterns just to stay open, according to Newsweek.

Residents are spending significant money on bottled water, with long lines at supermarkets and warehouse stores. The tourism sector is coordinating with PRASA to maintain operations.

What’s Next

Government officials have said they are not currently considering extending rationing to 72 hours or including the La Plata reservoir, though conditions are being evaluated daily, as the San Juan Daily Star reported.

Meteorologists warn that recovery will not come quickly. Ada Monzon, chief meteorologist at WAPA-TV, told CBS News: “It’s not going to take one tropical system. It’s going to take many tropical systems and the winter precipitation for us to get out of this drought crisis.”

For the families on Pomarrosa Street, the wait for relief continues. As Polyana Cabán, an 11th-grade student and daughter of resident Yoamadil Cabán, told NPR: “You never think about what it’s like not to have water until you don’t have it. Water is essential to do anything. It really changes your habits, and structure, in day to day life.”

Puerto Rico has faced water rationing before—in 2015 and 2020—but experts say the current emergency is broader, deeper, and more destabilizing. With no significant rainfall in the forecast and a strengthening El Niño pattern, the question is not whether the crisis will worsen, but how many more communities will be forced to adapt to a life without running water.