Nine years after Hurricane María, FEMA has committed $29.98 billion to rebuild what that storm and the disasters since have broken in Puerto Rico. By October 9, COR3 had paid out $7.36 billion of it, or 24.5%.
The emergency money moved. Of $6.03 billion FEMA committed for debris removal and emergency protective work, 99% has been paid, most of it in 2018 and 2019.
Rebuilding is where the money stalls. None of the 207 sites in the Department of Education’s fixed-cost FEMA program is finished, by COR3’s count. Of $257 million committed for transmission lines under the power utility’s program, 0.6% has been paid.
The figures come from the payment records of the Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3), the Puerto Rico agency that passes FEMA’s Public Assistance money to the agencies and towns doing the work. We matched them project by project to FEMA’s own figures for what it has committed. Across all eight disasters declared since 2017, that commitment is $38.86 billion. COR3 has paid out 35.1% of it.
Emergency work is 99% paid. Rebuilding is at 24.5%
Committed by FEMA and paid out by COR3, by kind of work, for the eight disasters declared since 2017.
- Emergency workDebris removal and emergency protective work. $6.03 billion committed, $5.97 billion paid99.0%
- RebuildingRoads, bridges, buildings, power, water and parks. $29.98 billion committed, $7.36 billion paid24.5%
- Grant managementCOR3's own management costs are not counted. $2.85 billion committed, $303 million paid10.6%
- All kinds of work$38.86 billion committed, $13.63 billion paid35.1%
Paid is not built
Most of the money paid for rebuilding went out before the work was done. Of the $7.36 billion, $4.92 billion was paid as Working Capital Advances. FEMA and Puerto Rico started that program in June 2022 to let agencies and towns start construction before being reimbursed. Only $1.44 billion, about a fifth, reimbursed work billed as finished.
Two thirds of the money paid for rebuilding went out as advances, before the work was done
The $7.36 billion COR3 has paid for rebuilding, by how it was paid.
- Working Capital Advancespaid before the work, since June 2022$4.92B 66.9%
- Other advances$380M 5.2%
- Small-project payments$610M 8.3%
- Reimbursement for work billed as finished$1.44B 19.6%
An advance is money in an agency’s account. COR3’s records do not show how much of it has become finished work, and some of it has come back. COR3’s interim executive director, María L. Marín Colón, told El Nuevo Día in September that the office recovered advances in 2025 and 2026 from recipients that were not ready to start.
COR3 also cites a different yardstick, money spent on completed projects, which it put at about 8% in September. It uses a different base and cannot be compared with the figures here.
Four years of waiting
In the four years after María, through 2021, permanent rebuilding received $260 million in total, COR3’s records show. The Government Accountability Office counted $158 million spent on long-term rebuilding as of January 2021.
“Up to 2021, there were zero projects approved for the electrical grid. Zero.”
Manuel Laboy Rivera, then COR3’s executive director, to a House subcommittee, September 26, 2024
The auditors and the agencies name several causes, and disagree on how much each matters.
| What slowed it | What the record says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Federal holds | From November 2017 to April 2019, and again in mid-2019, FEMA had to approve every drawdown. It cited Puerto Rico’s “history of fiscal irregularities and mismanagement.” | FEMA, July 2019 |
| Fixed-cost awards | The 2020 awards for the grid and the schools were “not an authorization to access and expend funds.” Each project needed its own approval. | GAO, February 2024 |
| Inflation | One AAA water plant ran 42% over its estimate. A RAND study for Puerto Rico’s Housing Department puts the shortfall at $5 billion. FEMA says its estimates “accounted for” inflation. | GAO, February 2024. RAND, December 2025 |
| Reviews | Environmental and historic reviews “can extend the review process by months or years.” All 14 FEMA reviewers on grid projects were temporary in July 2025. | GAO, June 2026 |
| Bids | Many requests for proposals drew no bidders and had to be run “two to three times.” | COR3 letter to GAO, January 2024 |
The fixed-cost awards, called FAASt, put $9.6 billion behind PREPA’s grid and $2 billion behind the Department of Education in September 2020, the White House announced. AAA’s $3.66 billion followed in January 2021. COR3’s records show no project under those awards approved before 2022. Today $3.97 billion of the three budgets still sits in island-wide balances, not yet assigned to any approved project.
The advances changed the curve. Payments for permanent work rose from about $110 million a year in 2020 and 2021 to $2.12 billion in 2024. The size of an advance is in dispute. GAO describes a cap of 50% of a project’s cost. COR3 says 75%, paid in steps of 25%. LUMA Energy told GAO that when an advance runs out, its construction can stop for up to 120 days.
Then payments fell, by 32% in 2025. COR3’s June report to Congress shows María rebuilding payments falling by more than half, and does not say why. In June 2025 the Homeland Security secretary added a review of every grant award over $100,000, a step rescinded in April 2026, according to GAO. Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández has tied the delays to that review. We found no FEMA statement explaining the drop. Payments this year reached $1.57 billion by October 9. The RAND study projected that at the 2023 pace, the recovery “will not be finished until 2051.”
Rebuilding got $260 million in the four years after María. Payments rose only when advances began in 2022
What COR3 paid out each year, with the dates that shaped it. Rebuilding peaked at $2.12 billion in 2024.
- 2017$207M
- September 20 Hurricane María
- November FEMA begins approving every drawdown, until April 2019
- 2018$2.09B
- 2019$1.57B
- July FEMA reinstates that approval, through September
- 2020$444M
- Earthquakes in the southwest
- September Fixed-cost awards for the grid and the schools
- 2021$342M
- January AAA's fixed-cost award
- June LUMA takes over the grid's lines
- 2022$1.34B
- April FEMA first commits money for grid construction
- June Working Capital Advances begin
- 2023$1.94B
- 2024$2.31B
- Rebuilding payments peak
- 2025$1.59B
- April 16 Island-wide blackout
- June DHS adds a review of every award over $100,000
- 2026*$1.48B
- April The $100,000 review is rescinded
- August 7 Metro water rotation begins
* Through October 9, 2026. Grant management, under $0.1 billion a year, is left out.
Who owns the delay is contested, most sharply on the grid.
“Over seven years after Hurricane Maria, FEMA does not know when Puerto Rico’s electrical grid will be completely rebuilt.”
DHS Office of Inspector General, September 2025
FEMA answered in the same report that responsibility for the grid “belongs to the government of Puerto Rico, not FEMA.” COR3 told GAO in May that “Federal requirements and processes significantly influence project timelines.” LUMA, which took over the grid’s lines in June 2021, told Congress in 2024 that PREPA “did not move one capital project to construction.”
Who holds the unpaid money
FEMA has committed $25.2 billion that COR3 has not yet paid out. Three public bodies hold nearly two thirds of it.
PREPA, the towns and AAA hold nearly two thirds of the $25.2 billion not yet paid out
Committed by FEMA and not yet paid out, with the share paid so far. Every kind of work.
- PREPA, the power utility$8.19B not yet paid out41.3%, a quarter to half paid out
- The 78 town governments$4.75B not yet paid out32.2%, a quarter to half paid out
- AAA, the water utility$3.32B not yet paid out30.2%, a quarter to half paid out
- Department of Education$2.43B not yet paid out10.0%, under a quarter paid out
- Public Housing Administration$1.21B not yet paid out19.7%, under a quarter paid out
- University of Puerto Rico$974M not yet paid out14.7%, under a quarter paid out
The two utilities are moving in opposite directions. PREPA’s payments fell by half from 2024 to 2025 and stand at $493 million so far this year. AAA’s $482 million this year is more than double its best previous year.
Where it works
Emergency work is close to fully paid, including $1.33 billion for the Housing Department’s emergency home repairs in 2018 and 2019. Small projects are 86% paid, against 34% for large ones.
Some towns have moved fast. Vieques has been paid 81.6% of the $62.8 million committed for its town government’s rebuilding projects. Juana Díaz is at 67.6%. A cluster on the south coast follows, with Santa Isabel, Arroyo, Salinas and Patillas between 48% and 58%.
Of the four agencies with fixed-cost awards, AAA is furthest along. It has finished 151 of its 321 sites, and about one in ten has yet to reach construction. The dredging of Carraízo, the reservoir that feeds the Sergio Cuevas plant, finished in March, the governor’s office said.
AAA has finished 151 of its 321 sites. Education and Public Housing have finished none
Sites in the four fixed-cost FEMA programs, by stage.
- AAA, the water utility151 of 321 sites finished
- PREPA, the power utility66 of 374 sites finished
- Department of Education0 of 207 sites finished
- Public Housing Administration0 of 240 sites finished
Where it is stuck
The Department of Education has been paid 6.6% of the $2.45 billion committed for its rebuilding. None of its 207 sites under the fixed-cost program is finished, and two thirds have not reached construction. The part of its award not yet assigned to a project, $827.5 million, has had no payment since FEMA committed it in September 2020.
In 2020 the DHS inspector general found that late FEMA reimbursements left the department without money or staff for repairs, and that “students and staff were attending schools in facilities that were determined unsafe.” This July the department opened bidding to rebuild Conchita Igartúa de Suárez School in Aguadilla and Juan B. Stubbe School in Cidra.
The Public Housing Administration has finished none of its 240 sites. The University of Puerto Rico has been paid 14.7% of its commitment.
PREPA’s rebuilding is 29.0% paid. In its fixed-cost program, transmission lines are at 0.6%. Vegetation clearing is at 12.5% of $543 million. GAO counted 400 miles cleared with federal money as of February, out of 16,000 planned. COR3 counts 560 of the 4,422 miles FEMA has funded, as of March 31. The two use different totals. GAO reported in June that LUMA had halted federally funded clearing in the San Juan region after FEMA did not approve some of its cost estimates.
The Energy Bureau’s final report on the April 16, 2025 island-wide blackout traced it to a tree near a transmission line and a rodent-damaged protection cable at Cambalache, Telemundo reported. Vegetation and transmission are the grid work with the smallest share paid. The payment records cannot show that any unpaid project would have prevented that blackout or any other.
Transmission lines and vegetation clearing are the least paid parts of the grid's fixed-cost rebuilding
What FEMA committed for PREPA's fixed-cost projects, by kind of grid work, and the share paid out.
- Transmission lines$257 million committed0.6%
- Vegetation clearing$543 million committed12.5%
- Substations$368 million committed26.3%
- Generation$1.00 billion committed28.6%
- Distribution$867 million committed32.0%
- Equipment and materials$2.89 billion committed42.2%
At the bottom of the town list, Toa Baja’s town government has been paid $1.0 million of $39.8 million. Maricao has been paid $6.2 million of $156.7 million. Lares, with $252.0 million committed, is at 8.1%.
Of the rebuilding projects FEMA committed before 2021 that are less than a tenth paid, the largest outside the fixed-cost budgets is in Lares. FEMA committed $111.5 million in March 2019 for permanent work on the town’s municipal cemetery. COR3 has paid $250,000 of it, or 0.2%, and made its last payment in September 2024. The records do not say why.
More than six years after the 2020 earthquakes in the southwest, 13.7% of the rebuilding money for them has been paid.
Vieques has been paid 81.6% for its town government's rebuilding. Toa Baja, 2.5%
The share paid out on each town government's own rebuilding projects. The median town is at 30.2%.
All 78 towns
- Vieques81.6%
- Camuy68.3%
- Vega Alta67.8%
- Juana Díaz67.6%
- Santa Isabel57.6%
- Culebra57.2%
- Arroyo57.0%
- Hormigueros55.6%
- Cabo Rojo55.0%
- Salinas54.5%
- Sabana Grande53.6%
- Lajas52.7%
- Villalba50.4%
- Río Grande50.0%
- Patillas48.6%
- Ceiba48.2%
- Coamo47.9%
- Bayamón47.4%
- Isabela47.3%
- Canóvanas47.0%
- Vega Baja41.1%
- Loíza40.0%
- San Sebastián39.8%
- Jayuya39.4%
- Toa Alta39.3%
- Juncos38.6%
- Dorado36.7%
- Humacao36.5%
- Morovis36.1%
- Naranjito34.9%
- Las Piedras32.3%
- Cataño32.0%
- Guayama31.5%
- Mayagüez31.5%
- Gurabo31.1%
- Aguas Buenas31.0%
- San Lorenzo31.0%
- Florida30.7%
- Carolina30.4%
- Ponce30.0%
- Adjuntas29.5%
- Naguabo28.0%
- Cidra27.8%
- Aguadilla27.1%
- Fajardo26.9%
- Aibonito26.6%
- Maunabo25.5%
- Manatí24.8%
- Hatillo24.7%
- Yabucoa24.5%
- Ciales24.3%
- Utuado23.5%
- Quebradillas22.7%
- Corozal21.5%
- Comerío21.0%
- Guaynabo20.4%
- Rincón19.3%
- Arecibo18.7%
- Yauco17.8%
- Guayanilla17.6%
- Guánica17.4%
- San Juan16.9%
- Peñuelas16.8%
- Orocovis15.1%
- Cayey14.9%
- Barceloneta12.9%
- Luquillo12.7%
- Moca12.0%
- Barranquitas11.9%
- Caguas11.6%
- Añasco10.7%
- Aguada9.8%
- Trujillo Alto8.7%
- Lares8.1%
- Las Marías7.5%
- San Germán4.1%
- Maricao3.9%
- Toa Baja2.5%
The water connection
This summer’s metro water rotation and AAA’s FEMA projects share a utility and a reservoir. Nothing in the records shows that one caused the other.
AAA began rotating service on August 7 for customers of the Sergio Cuevas filtration plant in Trujillo Alto, which draws on Carraízo. Customers in seven towns, from San Juan to Juncos, went two days with water and two without. The governor paused the rotation from September 2 after Carraízo rose, and her drought committee meets again October 23.
FEMA announced $88.7 million to dredge Carraízo in December 2022. AAA’s president at the time, Doriel Pagán, said work would begin in the first quarter of 2023. The governor’s office said it began in June 2024 and finished in March 2026, about five months before the rotation. The dredging recovered about 2 million cubic meters of storage, the first in 27 years, the office said.
COR3 paid the dredging in steps. Advances in 2023 and 2024 were followed by nothing in 2025, then $15.2 million in reimbursements this year.
FEMA’s project for the Sergio Cuevas plant itself was committed on May 21, 2026, at $116.16 million. COR3 advanced $75.0 million of it in July. The records do not say what the work covers or whether it changes how much water the plant can deliver.
La Plata, which serves Bayamón, Guaynabo, Toa Baja and other towns, has never been on a rotation, though on October 15 it stood in AAA’s adjustments band (ajustes). FEMA’s $133.12 million rehabilitation of its Enrique Ortega treatment plant is 49.6% paid, with nothing paid in 2024 or 2025. AAA’s consulting engineer has it finishing in July 2028.
AAA and the governor treated the rotation as a drought response. No public figure sets the 2 million cubic meters against Carraízo’s total capacity, and we have not modeled whether earlier dredging would have changed the timing. The records support a narrower point. The metro supply’s FEMA projects were approved between 2022 and 2026 and are partly paid, and the one with a public start date began 15 months after the start AAA announced.
Metro water's FEMA projects, approved 2022 to 2026, are partly paid
The FEMA projects behind the Carraízo and La Plata supply, with when FEMA approved each, what it committed and the share paid out.
- Carraízo reservoir dredgingApproved December 2022. $92.05 million committed64.7%
- La Plata's Enrique Ortega plantApproved December 2022. $133.12 million committed49.6%
- Sergio Cuevas filtration plantApproved May 2026. $116.16 million committed64.6%
- December 2022FEMA approves the dredging
- June 2024Dredging begins
- March 2026Dredging finished
- May 21, 2026FEMA commits the Sergio Cuevas plant project
- August 7, 2026Metro rotation begins
- September 2, 2026Rotation paused
The contracts question
Contract Watch, our weekly read of the Comptroller’s contract registry, cannot tell which contracts FEMA pays for. The registry codes where each contract’s money comes from, such as federal funds or the agency’s own revenue, and never names the federal program. No 2026 contract of $1 million or more mentions FEMA, COR3, María or Fiona. From public records alone, no contract can be tied to FEMA.
Since January 1, public bodies have granted $2.18 billion in contracts of $1 million or more coded as federal funds. Genera PR, which runs the power plants, accounts for 33 of them, worth $333.4 million.
LUMA and PREPA filed every 2026 contract of $1 million or more as their own revenue. They include more than $700 million in vegetation-clearing contracts that LUMA filed in October. AAA filed half of its 2026 contracts of that size as combined funds, worth $455.9 million.
AAA, PREPA, LUMA and Genera have not said publicly which of these contracts bill to FEMA, and COR3’s portal lists projects, not contractors. We will update this story if they do.
What we don’t know
- How much of the $7.36 billion paid for rebuilding has become finished work.
- Why payments fell in 2025. COR3’s report to Congress does not say, and we found no FEMA explanation.
- Whether the advance cap is 50% or 75% of a project. GAO and COR3 describe it differently.
- Whether the fixed-cost budgets can still pay for the work after inflation. FEMA and RAND disagree.
- How many grid projects are finished. GAO counted nine as of December 2025. COR3 counted 17, with 35 more substantially complete.
- Whether earlier dredging at Carraízo would have changed this summer’s rotation.
- What the government’s legal challenge to LUMA’s contract means for LUMA’s FEMA projects.
How we did this
COR3 publishes every Public Assistance payment since September 2017 in quarterly spreadsheets on its recovery portal. Through October 9 they add up to COR3’s headline total, to the dollar. We matched each payment to FEMA’s federal-share commitment for the same project in FEMA’s open data, and those commitments land within $6 million of COR3’s own figure.
Rebuilding means FEMA’s permanent-work categories C through G. Emergency work is categories A and B. Hazard mitigation grants are left out. Paid includes advances and does not subtract money returned. COR3’s own management costs are drawn separately and are not counted. Site stages are from COR3’s fixed-cost project list of October 14, and contracts from the Comptroller’s registry, searched October 15.
Our recovery tracker follows FEMA’s commitments by town and by agency every week, and its data is free to download. The GAO reports cited are GAO-24-105557 and GAO-26-107772.