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Rising Water, Dry Land, and a Legislature That Talks a Lot · 787daily — Puerto Rico Every Morning

• 0:00
  Hey everyone, welcome to 787daily, our week in review for the week ending September 13th, 2026.
• 0:05
  I'm Marisol.
• 0:06
  And I'm Diego, and Marisol, this week is one of those weeks where the numbers almost don't make sense next to each other, so buckle up.
• 0:14
  Right, let's start with water, because we actually have two updates on Carraízo this week.
• 0:19
  Early in the week it rose 58 centimeters to 40.64 meters, and then later it climbed again, up 16 more centimeters to 40.8 meters.
• 0:28
  Wait, so it's climbing twice in one week?
• 0:30
  That's a lot of movement for a reservoir.
• 0:33
  It is.
• 0:34
  Both readings put it in what they call the seguridad band, and by the second reading it was 1.10 meters above the observación line.
• 0:42
  Okay, "seguridad" sounds good, it sounds safe, but why do I feel like that's not the whole story?
• 0:48
  Because here's the twist — at the same time Carraízo is rising, we've got 60 out of 78 municipios in at least moderate drought as of September 15, and 36 of those are in extreme drought.
• 0:59
  Hold on.
• 1:00
  So one reservoir is doing fine, rising even, while more than three quarters of the island is dry?
• 1:05
  65 municipios total are abnormally dry or worse.
• 1:08
  So it's not just extreme cases, it's most of Puerto Rico showing some level of dryness.
• 1:13
  That's the part that gets me.
• 1:15
  You'd think a reservoir rising is all good news, but it doesn't mean the drought's over, it just means that particular system got some relief.
• 1:22
  Exactly, and I think that's the story this week, it's not one clean narrative, it's two things being true at once.
• 1:29
  Water levels can rise in one place while the broader map still shows most of the island in trouble.
• 1:35
  It's a good reminder that these reservoir updates are a snapshot of one system, not a verdict on the whole water situation.
• 1:42
  Right.
• 1:42
  So keep watching both of those numbers, because they're telling different parts of the same story.
• 1:47
  Alright, switching gears, but honestly, still kind of about waiting for something to actually happen — let's talk about the Legislature.
• 1:54
  Yes, so in the week of September 11 through the seventeenth, 22 of the 30 measures we track saw some kind of action.
• 2:01
  22 out of 30, that sounds busy.
• 2:03
  It does, until you hear the second half of that headline — none of them were enacted.
• 2:08
  None.
• 2:09
  Zero.
• 2:09
  22 things happened, and not one crossed the finish line.
• 2:12
  Not one.
• 2:13
  I mean, motion isn't the same as progress, I guess.
• 2:16
  You can have a lot of hearings, a lot of votes, a lot of paperwork moving around, and still end the week with nothing signed, nothing final.
• 2:24
  It's the legislative equivalent of running on a treadmill.
• 2:27
  Lots of activity, same location.
• 2:29
  I actually laughed at that, but it also is a little frustrating if you're someone waiting on one of those measures to actually matter for your life.
• 2:37
  Totally fair.
• 2:38
  We'll be watching to see if any of that motion turns into something enacted in the coming weeks.
• 2:43
  Alright, and now the story that I think a lot of people felt directly in their homes this week, and it's not a fun one.
• 2:51
  No, this one's tough.
• 2:52
  LUMA had its worst year yet for outages, 28.4 hours without power per customer in fiscal 2026.
• 2:58
  And that's the worst of LUMA's five full years running the grid.
• 3:02
  The worst of all five.
• 3:04
  So this isn't a one-off bad month, this is the peak of a trend that's been going the wrong direction.
• 3:10
  28.4 hours, when you actually sit with that number, that's over a full day, cumulatively, that customers went without power this year.
• 3:18
  And behind every one of those hours is somebody's refrigerator, somebody's medical equipment, somebody trying to work or just get through a hot day.
• 3:25
  Yeah, this isn't a story where we crack jokes.
• 3:28
  People have built their whole routines around unreliability, and that shouldn't be normal.
• 3:32
  It shouldn't.
• 3:33
  And when you set it against everything else this week, the drought numbers, the reservoir story, it does paint a picture of a lot of infrastructure under strain at the same time.
• 3:43
  Water stress, power stress, and a Legislature that's moving without arriving anywhere.
• 3:46
  It's a lot to carry for one week.
• 3:49
  It is, but that's why we do this, so people can see the full shape of the week, not just one headline.
• 3:56
  Well said.
• 3:56
  And if you want the full detail on any of these stories, the water numbers, the drought map, the LUMA data, the Legislature's rundown, go check it all out.
• 4:05
  Head to 787daily.com for the full stories.
• 4:09
  We'll see you next week, Puerto Rico.
• 4:11
  Take care of each other out there.