After Puerto Rico was pummeled by Hurricane Maria last week, a
Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds, the island has been left in
shambles. After suffering widespread power outages thanks to Irma, 1
million Puerto Ricans were left without electricity. 60,000
still hadn’t gotten power when Maria brought a total, island-wide power
outage and severe shortages in food, water, and other supplies.
As of today there’s still no power
on the island except for a handful of generators powering high-priority
buildings like select hospitals, and the island likely won’t return to
full power for another half a year. This also means that there are next to zero working cell phone towers and no reception anywhere on the island.
Due to the blackout, many residents are relying on small gas-fed generators, and fuel is running out
(though authorities in Puerto Rico insist that it’s a distribution
problem, not a shortage). Puerto Ricans are waiting in six-hour lines
for fuel, while many stations have run completely dry. In most of Puerto
Rico there’s no water either - that means no showers, no flushable
toilets, and no drinkable water that’s not out of a bottle. In some of
the remoter parts of the island, rescue workers are just barely
beginning to arrive.
Puerto Rico is experiencing all of the normal catastrophes brought on by a major hurricane - and then some. In Houston after Harvey and Florida
after Irma, wastewater pumping systems failed, causing significant
sewage spillage. The same is almost guaranteed to happen in Puerto Rico
thanks to the sustained power outages, but will be greatly exacerbated
by the fact that the island’s electrical system was already “degraded and unsafe”.
In
fact, nearly every problem typically faced in the wake of natural
disaster will be amplified and accelerated in Puerto Rico thanks to
long-existing financial and environmental
problems and far fewer rescue and relief workers. Florida and Texas
also dealt with contamination from Superfund sites, but Puerto Rico has a
whopping 23 in its relatively tiny area.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Public Services,
a superfund site is “any land in the United States that has been
contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by the EPA as a candidate
for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health and/or the
environment.” These sites are put on the National Priorities List (NPL),
a list of the most dire cases of environmental contamination in the
U.S. and its territories. These are places where a person can’t even
walk on the ground and breathe the air without seriously endangering
their health.
Even within the designation of Superfund, sites can
be ranked in their level of catastrophism, and Puerto Rico is home to
one of the very worst. For sixty years the U.S. military used Vieques,
an outlying island, for extensive bomb testing. Two thirds of the island
now have extreme levels of contamination which have been related to disproportionately high cancer rates among the 9,000 residents. Even today Vieques remains blanketed with unexploded bombs, bullets, and projectiles.
Puerto
Rico also has more contaminants to worry about thanks to the coal
industry, which has been stockpiling coal ash in southern Puerto Rico.
According to Adriana Gonzales of the Sierra Club, an uncovered
five-story pile of coal ash situated next to a low-income and minority community
in the town of Guayama threatens to toxify the entire area thanks to
its content of heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and chromium that
will be released when the rain liquefies the ash.
The coal industry also dumped
thousands of tons of coal ash in Puerto Rican landfills for years, a
common practice that has recently mushroomed into a disaster as local landfills overflow
thanks to the territory’s financial crisis. While the ash is not Puerto
Rico’s (it’s owned by Pennsylvania-based Applied Energy Systems) they
are now faced with its toxic burden, despite the fact that the Puerto
Rican government ordered the company to cover and secure the pile under
the threat of Hurricane Irma, weeks before Maria hit.
Puerto
Rico’s fallout of Maria will result in a long, long road to recovery.
Even though the island is home to 3.5 million U.S. citizens, help is few
and far between compared to response in the U.S., and the island’s
pre-existing poverty and environmentally dangerous Superfund Sites will
make rebuilding a tricky and toxic business, costing in the billions of
dollars. OilPrice
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