With 85 percent of Puerto Rico still without power and current projections showing only 30 percent up and running by November 1, the plan put forward by Governor Ricardo Rosselló seems ambitious.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said he hopes that power will be restored to 95% of the island's energy grid by December 15.
"This is an aggressive agenda, but we cannot be sort of passive in the face of Puerto Rico's challenges," Rosselló said. "We are going to need all hands on deck."
It’s an aggressive agenda, and also a necessary one. Even those areas where the water system is up and running are under a boil order — something that’s difficult to comply with when there’s no electricity and tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed. Resources are still so scarce that last week it was reported that people in part of the island were even lining up to drink water pumped from a Superfund site polluted with chemicals that damage the liver and can cause cancer.
Friday afternoon, CNN watched workers from the Puerto Rican water utility, Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados, or AAA, distribute water from a well at the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site, which was listed in 2016 as part of the federal Superfund program for hazardous waste cleanup.
Governor Rosselló’s aggressive timetable reflects a race to provide vital services to Americans still at grave risk. Meanwhile Trump’s statements on Puerto Rico over the last week included declaring that that island was already dysfunctional before the hurricanes and blaming the island’s fiscal disaster on the people who are living with it — or dying with it — rather than the hedge fund managers who made millions off of misery.
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