Puerto Rico's southern region fights for cleaner air, water
>> Shuttered windows are a permanent fixture in Salinas, an industrial town on Puerto Rico's southeast coast that is considered one of the U.S. territory's most contaminated regions.
For years, toxic ash and noxious chemicals from coal-fired and thermoelectric power plants have enveloped this community, and residents have complained about health problems ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's.
Then last year, a bombshell: Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency traveled to Salinas to announce that the town also has one of the highest concentrations of ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing gas, in a U.S. jurisdiction.
“We're fighting a lot of battles,” said José Santiago, a 74-year-old retiree.
Emboldened by the attention that the federal government has put on Salinas, Santiago and others are demanding a huge cleanup and penalties for those contaminating the region.
“I will keep fighting until I die,” said Elsa Modesto, a 77-year-old retiree who has not missed a single EPA meeting since last year's announcement. “I want to know what's in the environment.”
Puerto Rico ranks 22nd out of 56 U.S. states and territories based on total managed waste released per square mile, at 4.2 million pounds. Six of the top 10 municipalities in that category are in Puerto Rico's southern region, with Salinas ranked sixth, according to data obtained from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory.
Salinas also has one of the highest incidence rates of cancer in Puerto Rico, with 140 cases reported in 2019, the newest figures available from the island's Central Registry of Cancer. Salinas has a higher rate than the neighboring town of Guayama, where cases of cancer and other diseases have increased since the coal-fired power plant began operating there in 2002, said Dr. Gerson Jiménez, director of the Menonite Hospital who has testified in public hearings and called for the closure of the plant.
“Medical doctors who work in the southeast area of Puerto Rico have noticed that since the AES Corporation began operating in Guayama, there has been a significant increase in diseases of the respiratory tract, urinary tract, as well as a significant increase in diagnoses of various types of cancer,” he testified at one hearing.
The level of contamination has prompted the EPA for the first time to test air and groundwater in Puerto Rico's southeast region, with Administrator Michael Regan saying that low-income communities and communities of color have suffered unjustly for decades.
Salinas is a town of nearly 26,000 people — of which 28% identify as Black — with a median household income of $18,000 a year. More than half of its population is poor, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The town is nestled between the coal-burning power plant, two of the island's largest thermoelectric plants and other industries, including a company that produces thermoset composites, a material used in major appliances like refrigerators. That company, IDI Caribe Inc., is the facility that releases the most emissions in Salinas, according to the EPA.
Overall, styrene and ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic gas, are the top two chemicals released into the air and water in Salinas, officials say. Salinas and Guayama also have sulfur dioxide levels that exceed new standards.
Meanwhile, a study by Puerto Rico's Chemistry Association published in late 2021 found the presence of heavy metals linked to coal in potable water in Salinas. The amounts found did not exceed regulatory limits.