As experts warn about the peak of the El Niño season and effects that could extend through August 2027, the nonprofit La Maraña has presented a draft of the "Ley para la Seguridad Hídrica de Puerto Rico" (Puerto Rico Water Security Act). Rather than focusing only on aqueduct infrastructure problems, the proposal centers on improving the recharge areas of water sources to address future drought.
The measure would have the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA) push a public policy recognizing water availability as a matter of "the highest priority and public interest," essential to public health, economic development, food security and general well-being. It would also declare "Strategic Water Recharge Areas," or watersheds, critical infrastructure and order the DRNA to identify and delimit them using scientific information.
Protecting those designated areas would become a "mandatory criterion in territorial planning, environmental review, land-use planning, infrastructure development and permitting processes." Cynthia Burgos López, executive director and co-founder of La Maraña, an organization dedicated to sustainable community planning through participatory efforts, told El Nuevo Día that water is generated in the landscape before it reaches the infrastructure and systems of the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (AAA), and that is where care should begin.
She said the bill aims to develop the mechanisms and science needed to understand the current water system, specifically the landscape. Attorney José Arturo Maldonado of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) Legal Clinic said Puerto Rico has a legal vacuum on protecting the source from which water is extracted, and no law protects those critical zones.