Josué Colón Ortiz, Puerto Rico’s energy czar and executive director of the Public-Private Partnerships Authority (AAPP), questioned on Wednesday how quickly LUMA Energy responded to allegations of alleged pressure on the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, saying the company has not shown the same diligence on blackouts and other failures of the electric system. The remarks follow LUMA president Janisse Quiñones speaking about alleged attempts to influence the court’s decisions in the case tied to the company’s contract, allegations La Fortaleza has rejected as false and defamatory.
LUMA has to go
Colón Ortiz said it is "truly surprising" that LUMA’s president reacted so fast to "false and defamatory" statements when that diligence has been absent during the years the company has been responsible for operating, maintaining and rebuilding the transmission and distribution system. He said Puerto Rico has about $11 billion in federal reconstruction funds for the grid, of which LUMA has obtained reimbursements of only around 6% after six years of operation.
He said data reported as of November 9 to the Central Office for Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3) and the U.S. Department of Energy showed LUMA had cleared only 238 of the 5,299.7 miles of vegetation assigned to it under the FAASt program, progress of 4.49%. He listed nine major outages since 2021, including three island-wide blackouts that left about 1.47 million customers without service each.
He said Energy Bureau statistics show longer and more frequent interruptions under LUMA. "LUMA has to go," he said.