Insensitive joke aside, Puerto Rico does have a toxic waste problem that feds are slow to fix

Long before a comedian’s joke about Puerto Rico lit up headlines and triggered the left, the U.S. island territory was grappling with the toxic issue at the heart of the joke: contamination and pollution.

For decades, Puerto Rico has been saddled with microplastic pollution on its beaches, contamination of drinking water from industry, and air pollution and coal ash contamination from the plants that powered the island’s electricity.

The legacy has been so enduring that last year the Biden Justice Department announced the creation of a special task force to investigate and “prosecute violations of federal law harming the environment, wildlife and human health, and associated fraud, waste and abuse” in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Island region. These facts were ignored in the faux-outrage over a comedian's jokes about Puerto Rico during former President Trump's rally last night.

“Environmental justice and ensuring that all residents of Puerto Rico enjoy a healthy environment free of hazardous waste and other pollutants is a top priority of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department,” U.S. Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow for the District of Puerto Rico said at the time. “This Task Force will combine and leverage resources from many federal agencies to aggressively enforce civil and criminal environmental laws.

Failed to meet Clean Air Act Standards

Only last month, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency announced that two communities in Puerto Rico – one in San Juan and the other in Guayama-Salinas – failed to meet Clean Air Act standards for sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of power plants that is dangerous to human respiratory systems. The finding of “non-attainment” will force power utilities in the areas to quickly reduce air pollution.

The environmental group Earth Justice has also flagged Puerto Rico for dangerous amounts of coal ash – the byproduct of coal-bunring plants that is so toxic it is supposed to be stored in specially regulated dumps or containment ponds. But in Puerto Rico large sites where coal ash was dumped – often as fill decades ago – have been exempted from even the newest rules issued this summer, creating concern among environmentalists.

“The revised rule does not address coal ash that was dumped off-site or used as fill, which occurred at dozens of locations in Puerto Rico,” Earth Justice wrote recently.

Denying the facts: a "legacy of contamination"

“The longer enforcement is delayed, the more hazardous contaminants enter Puerto Rico’s air and water and the more difficult cleanup will be,” the group warned,

Last year, ABC News published an extensive expose on how a special tax break unique to Puerto Rico drove large industries to the territory, like pharmaceutical manufacturing, that dried up fresh water supplies and left a legacy of contamination. “Puerto Rico has at least 19 contaminated sites that are on the national priority list for cleanup,” ABC reported. “Five of the sites on the national priority list can be partially attributed to the pharmaceutical industry, according to the EPA.”

For most of the decade before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, liberal groups championed Puerto Rico’s plight and lambasted the slow action to clean up pollution there. The pressure has been so great that even the EPA’s top official was forced to take a special trip there in 2022.

"We are hearing about environmental injustices that have been happening for decades that we need to resolve urgently," EPA Administrator Michael Regan told Reuters during his trip. "And now we have the resources and the will to begin to address some of these concerns.”

Regan’s trip included a visit to a neighborhood near a coal-powered generator where residents have been impacted by coal ash. But industry and power plants aren't the only culprits.

The tourism industry vital to the island’s economy has also raised worries about plastic pollution at once-pristine beaches.

In March 2021, the journal Science Direct issued a “marine pollution bulletin” after scientists visited six beaches on Puerto Rico and found plastic contamination on all six. “Microplastics were detected in all six sandy beaches of Puerto Rico,” the alert said, “Differences in the proportions of microplastics among the six beaches appear to reflect diverse sources of pollution.

“Results showed comparable levels to other world beaches, some classified as highly contaminated,” it added.

After two hurricanes decimated Puerto Rico’s energy grid a few years ago, residents and local experts took matters into their own hands to force the U.S. government to do more after decades of inaction. In addition, a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office found that because the U.S. Navy had for 60 years used the eastern side of Vieques, P.R., as a bombing range and dropping 5 million pounds of ordnance each year, the area is one of 26 sites throughout the Puerto Rican archipelago which remain on the Department of the Interior's National Priority List for cleanup because of extraordinary cancer rates.

“The government agencies are the ones who should be checking if the water is getting polluted, if the quality of the air is adequate for the residents of the area,” Dr. Osvaldo Rosario, an environmental chemist in Guayama, told Energy News Network last year. “It’s immoral to know that this is happening and not want to document it because it’s politicized.”