Why Puerto Rico is still struggling to rebuild electrical grid 5 years after Hurricane Maria

A day before the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria's landfall, Puerto Rico was pummeled again by another storm, Fiona, a Category 1 hurricane that shut down the island's electric grid, leaving residents in the dark for days. In 2017, Maria and Irma took down all of the island's transmission lines and damaged the grid, resulting in the longest blackout in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Hurricane Fiona made landfall on Sept. 18 and knocked out the still-unstable electric system, an unwelcome reminder to residents that even after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) obligated $9.5 billion to rebuild the grid after Hurricanes Maria and Irma, the work is far from finished.

The vast majority of that money, which was approved in September 2020, has not yet been spent. The office in Puerto Rico overseeing reconstruction of the grid said in mid-September that the island has received $1.5 billion in disbursements that were approved under emergency appropriations after Hurricane Maria.

"The funds that we have were appropriated for Puerto Rico to improve the grid — … I don't think anything has happened. We seem to have many more power outages after Maria," said one expert, Agustin Carbo, the senior manager on energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund.