Last week, as I was on a conference call with colleagues in the mainland U.S. from my office in San Juan, we got an unpleasant surprise: the power went out.
We only moved into our new office about a month ago, after losing our old space to Hurricane Maria. So when over a million people in Puerto Rico lost our power last week, it was an ugly reminder of how far we have left to go. Two steps forward, one step back.
But at Sierra Club de Puerto Rico we are determined to do more than rebuild what was lost. We will use the opportunity of this disaster to build a more just economy that serves the needs of the people. Rather than recreate our polluting, unreliable, fossil fuel-dependent electric grid, we’ll build a decentralized clean energy system that is flexible and practical for rural communities across the island. We are working with local farmers that build resilient crops to ensure food security for the island. We’re advocating for more composting and recycling infrastructure to manage waste and debris. We intend to build something better than what we had before: an island full of strong communities that are equipped to face future climate events.
Environmental Justice Organizer Adriana Gonzales (right) with Sierra Club de Puerto Rico volunteers
Recently a group of folks visited from the national Sierra Club to learn about how we’re building a just and sustainable recovery from the hurricanes. We took our visitors on a tour of the island to meet the people building that recovery. Today I’d like to share with you what we shared with them, so you can see what kind of support Puerto Rico needs from our friends on the mainland, and learn from our journey toward recovery.
Our first stop was a visit to the Juan Martin community near the El Yunque National Forest to learn from farmers, ecotourism guides and the Centro para la Conservación del Paisaje about their work to restore and protect the lands in and around the national forest. Their work provides a powerful example of how to build local resilient communities. We also heard about the community-led recovery from the hurricanes from Coalicion Pro Corredor Ecologico del Noreste.
Meeting with folks from Centro para la Conservación del Paisaje
Next up we stopped in La Vega to learn from Olga and Madeline from Centro para la Conservación del Paisaje about how solar lamps are supporting recovery. La Vega was one of the communities that the Sierra Club worked with directly after the hurricanes..Sierra Club raised over a million dollars from folks on the mainland to help with immediate recovery needs, and one of our biggest contributions has been these solar lamps, which enable folks to charge their phones and light their homes without relying on polluting, expensive gas generators. More than 150 families have received solar lanterns and related materials. Olga and Madeline have now started a community leadership team to work on long term resiliency structures. Check out this video of our volunteer Edwin Montalvo, who has been helping to lead our effort to get these lamps to folks who need them.
Unfortunately not all our meetings were held in a national forest. We also stopped off at the offices of the Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y Riego (UTIER), which represents the workers who maintain Puerto Rico’s electric grid and irrigation. There we also heard from folks from the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR), the union representing many of Puerto Rico’s public school teachers. Leaders from both unions joined a Congressional briefing by video chat, to share the challenges that their workers are facing after the hurricanes.
Meeting with leaders from UTIER and FMPR
Utility workers are particularly vulnerable right now as they face the imminent threat of Puerto Rico’s public utility being privatized. UTIER Vice President Fredyson Martinez told us, “The governor says privatizing our public utility will make energy cheaper. But our data shows otherwise. This government is taking advantage of our crisis to sell off the people of Puerto Rico’s greatest asset.”
Teachers in Puerto Rico were already under attack, even before the hurricane. Austerity measures imposed by the Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico under Congress’s direction have forced the closures of dozens of public schools. We learned from FMPR that Puerto Rico’s schools have been held together by the often unpaid efforts of teachers to rebuild schools after the hurricane and get their students back at their desks. But the lack of support for the recovery from Congress, combined with attacks on public school teachers all over the U.S. from Betsy Devos and the Trump administration, have held them back.
On day two of our tour, we left San Juan and ventured out to meet with Sierra Club de Puerto Rico members in the southern region of the island. Before the hurricane we had been working closely with communities in and around Salinas to organize around the ASE coal plant and the Palo Seco oil plant that pollute their region. On our visit to Aguirre we heard that the environmental justice organizing created a community network that was ready to activate when the hurricanes hit. Folks in Coquí are now organizing to build their own local solar grid, rather than wait to be reconnected to the island’s main grid, since the region’s topography leaves them vulnerable to future outages.
Aguirre oil plant
The Coquí community is ready to act, but it’s an uphill battle. Possible new tariffs proposed by the Trump administration would make it more expensive to invest in solar to power the town. According to local community organizer Nelson Santos Torres, “We have the people and the will to make change. But we also have all the pollution and the environmental injustice here in Coquí. What we need are resources to fight back.”
Nelson Santos Torres
We said goodbye at the annual Sierra Club de Puerto Rico chapter assembly, where hundreds of our members came out to connect with each other, learn about ways to get involved and celebrate our work for a sustainable and just recovery from the hurricanes.
If you’d like to learn more about our work in Puerto Rico, visit our website at puertorico.sierraclub.org. Or even better - come visit! Puerto Rico is still recovering, but our tourist facilities are up and running. One of the best ways you can support us is to vacation here and explore the incredible natural beauty that makes our home so special.
National staff saying goodbye for now to friends from Sierra Club de Puerto Rico