Anyone in metro San Juan who spent June and July watching an empty tap already knows the AAA kept billing through it. The utility now says about 37,000 customers in San Juan, Carolina, Canóvanas and Loíza will get that money back as a credit — and the Senate committee that has been chasing the question says the number should be far larger.
Edna Borges, the AAA’s director of customer service, told senators on September 3 that the adjustments would show up on September or early October bills. The utility’s operations division decides which zones were affected and for how long, and the credit follows from that: customers the AAA has already identified do not have to do anything.
The catch is what happens if you are not on that list. A customer who lost service and sees no credit has to call the AAA and file a formal complaint to open an investigation. Nothing arrives automatically for a household the operations map missed, which is the practical reason to check a September bill rather than assume.
One widespread misreading is worth correcting: the roughly $30 minimum charge does not put you outside the programme. Senator Héctor Joaquín Sánchez Álvarez, who chairs the Senate Commission on Transportation, Telecommunications, Public Services and Consumer Affairs, has been explicit that customers in billing blocks one and two are entitled to the adjustment even when their bill is the minimum. Paying little is not the same as owing it.
His larger objection is the count. Sánchez Álvarez has questioned whether 37,000 can be right given how many households across those four municipios went without water — the same stretch in which Canóvanas alone distributed 2.2 million gallons by truck and handled 4,745 service cases. The commission’s work sits under two measures: Senate Resolution 543, which examines compliance with Law 143-2018, the fair-billing law written for exactly this situation, and Senate Resolution 560, which looks at how the AAA responded to the emergency.
AAA president Luis R. González Delgado excused himself from the September 3 hearing. He was cited again for 9:30 this morning, alongside the interim president of the governing board, in what the commission has said will be its last hearing on both resolutions. The questions left on the table are the ones that decide whether 37,000 is a floor or a ceiling: how the affected zones were drawn, how many complaints have been filed by customers who were left off, and how many credits have actually reached a bill.
Reporting by El Nuevo Día, Primera Hora and NotiCel. 787 Daily will update this piece when the hearing’s outcome is known.