For the second time this year, the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) filed a special action on Tuesday against the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (AAA) for failing to deliver public information. Two months after CPI journalist Amanda Pérez Pintado filed an initial information request, the AAA has not provided monthly invoices, reports or other documents on services provided by Truenorth Corporation.
CPI executive director Carla Minet denounced that the AAA gives no reasons for not responding and systematically ignores such requests, saying the administration’s amendments to the Transparency Law gave the government more grace days not to answer. The CPI first sued the AAA in March over progress reports on reconstruction of the sanitary trunk line in the Puntilla neighborhood of Arecibo; after winning that case, the CPI published an investigation finding eight years and nearly $20 million spent to repair one pipe in Arecibo since Hurricane María.
Pérez Pintado noted the AAA loses more than half the water it produces and has failed to fix the problem despite a million-dollar public investment to diagnose it. With Víctor Rodríguez Velázquez, she has published investigations on the AAA’s $50 million in payments to companies to address water loss while the problem worsened, and on the agency spending only 4% of its funds on pipe repair.
Pérez Pintado said the requested information serves to know how a vital resource is managed.