Puerto Rico Senate Grills AAA Chief Over Water Crisis as Tourism, Business Feel the Pinch

San Juan—Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (AAA) President Luis Reinaldo González Delgado appeared before the full Puerto Rico Senate on Wednesday to account for a water crisis that disrupted service across the metropolitan area and struck some of the island’s most economically active corridors during peak tourism season.

The Special Full Committee hearing was ordered through Senate Resolution 539, filed by Sen. Juan Oscar Morales, and held June 17 at the Capitol. San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero Lugo also attended.

The crisis began when AAA detected a break in a 72-inch pipe in the Superaqueduct — the main transmission line supplying the metropolitan water system. During repair work, two additional breaks were identified, compounding the emergency. Customers in San Juan, Bayamón, Guaynabo, Gurabo, Isla Verde, Caguas, Juncos, and Aguas Buenas were among those affected, according to published reports.

Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz had previously pointed to management failures at the AAA as the root cause of the repeated breakdowns. Mayor Romero Lugo told the committee the capital has been dealing with months of service failures, low pressure, and inadequate responses from the corporation — not a single isolated incident, according to Metro Puerto Rico.

The economic dimension

The outages hit Old San Juan and Isla Verde — two of Puerto Rico’s highest-value tourism and hospitality corridors — during what is typically a high-occupancy period. Telemundo Puerto Rico reported that restaurants in the main tourist zone went days without running water. For a jurisdiction that has anchored much of its economic recovery narrative on tourism, infrastructure failures of this scale and visibility carry consequences well beyond the immediate service disruption.

Lawmakers continue to hear testimony as the committee hearing remains underway.