Puerto Rico Is Still Waiting on Billions in Aid Nine Years After Hurricane Maria

Puerto Rico has not received billions of dollars promised for recovery efforts after Hurricane Maria destroyed large swaths of land and imperiled its power grid in 2017, a government watchdog audit found.

The U.S. vowed to send the territory $14 billion to restore its heavily burdened electrical grid, whose deterioration has caused chronic blackouts and high utility costs for years. Yet just a fraction of those allocated funds have made it to the island due to cumbersome project review processes, staff turnover, project funding requirements, and the dire financial straits of the island’s electrical authority — which faces a $10 billion debt restructuring — the Government Accountability Office reported.

Puerto Rico has received about $2.7 billion of the $11.1 billion earmarked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency since 2017 for equipment, materials and engineering costs associated with grid modernization.

An additional $2.9 billion in allocated funds was managed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Energy, but most of that money has not been disbursed to the U.S. territory, the report said.

FEMA has faced increasing staff turnover in recent years in addition to a recent Homeland Security Department hiring freeze, meaning the agency lacks capacity to review grid recovery projects in a timely manner, the GAO report said. This year, FEMA declined to renew contracts for its disaster recovery units, whose work “wasn’t needed,” then-acting administrator Karen Evans told Congress in April.

The GAO has documented similar findings for years: One study from 2024 shows the U.S. government used only $1.8 billion of the more than $23 billion public assistance funding allocated by FEMA to revive Puerto Rico’s utilities and power grid, among other recovery priorities.

At the current pace, recovery from the last decade’s natural disasters could extend until 2051, nonpartisan think tank RAND projected last December.

California Rep. Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said the audit showed the federal government had “broken its promise” to Puerto Rico.

“The people of Puerto Rico have waited nine years for their government to keep its word. They watched billions get appropriated and almost none of it arrive,” Huffman said in a statement. “Puerto Ricans are paying more for electricity than almost anyone in the country and getting the least reliable power in return.”

Hurricane Maria killed as many as 4,645 people and triggered the longest blackout in U.S. history for 11 months. Puerto Rico has since endured a string of earthquakes that hit the archipelago in late December 2019 to early January 2020, as well as chronic blackouts that can last for days.

This week’s GAO audit coincides with the 10-year anniversary of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), which established a federally appointed oversight board to steward the territory’s $72 billion debt.

Puerto Rico’s central power authority, PREPA, still faces bankruptcy and with it, roadblocks to receiving FEMA reimbursements. And Luma Energy — the private company that took over management of PREPA’s energy distribution in 2021 — last week countersued the Puerto Rican government over González’s attempt to cancel its 15-year contract early.

Resident Commissioner Pablo Hernández — Puerto Rico’s nonvoting representative in Congress — argues PROMESA was unnecessary when it was signed into law and denies residents the right to elect their own officials, despite the board’s success.

“We surrendered our self-government in exchange for fiscal relief. Ten years later, we have restructured most of our debts, we have balanced our most recent budgets, but we still dream about restoring our democratic self-government,” Hernández said in a Tuesday floor speech.