Reps. Ritchie Torres and Nick Langworthy Urge Trump Administration to Swiftly Clear Overgrown Vegetation in Puerto Rico to Protect Island’s Energy Grid
“Puerto Rico’s abundance of vegetation is creating a scarcity of reliable and affordable energy.”
Yesterday, Congressmen Ritchie Torres (NY-15) and Nick Langworthy (NY-23) wrote to Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Acting Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service Paul Souza regarding the need for efficient vegetation clearance in Puerto Rico.
On the letter, Puerto Rico Senate President Rivera Schatz said:
“I profoundly thank Congressmen Torres and Langworthy for their leadership and immediate response. This bipartisan letter not only validates the serious concerns we have raised about the bureaucratic ‘thicket’ delaying this critical work but also puts forward concrete, actionable solutions. Consolidating these projects and providing relief from unnecessarily prolonged environmental reviews, as they request, is exactly the kind of federal partnership needed to protect the American citizens of Puerto Rico and uphold the national security interests, consistent with the America First policy.”
The letter reads as follows (full PDF here):
“I am writing to express serious concern over the failed execution of vegetation clearance in Puerto Rico—a failure that continues to compromise the reliability of the nation’s most fragile electric grid and places millions of American citizens at constant risk of outages.
“Across Puerto Rico, 16,000 miles of vegetation have grown unchecked beneath high-voltage transmission lines. Each time the island experiences intense rain or strong winds, the overgrowth triggers widespread outages, plunging communities into darkness and exposing critical infrastructure—like hospitals and emergency services—to preventable danger.
“Puerto Rico’s abundance of vegetation is creating a scarcity of reliable and affordable energy. Although vegetation clearance has the potential to cut outages by nearly half, progress has been abysmally slow. Out of the 16,000 miles in need of clearing, only 80 miles have been addressed in recent years. The primary obstacle is not a lack of funding or workforce—it is the federal government’s thicket of bureaucracy, a fitting metaphor for the problem at hand.
“Rather than treating vegetation clearance as a single, coordinated infrastructure project, the federal government has divided it into 30 subprojects, each subject to its own set of regulatory hurdles and environmental reviews. If Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) are required for most or all of these projects, clearance could be delayed for up to eight years.
“Let that sink in: The United States built the Empire State Building in one year, but we’re on track to spend eight years cutting overgrown brush? How far we have fallen!
“Of the 30 subprojects, only one has begun, and it took more than 18 months just to get underway. At this rate, vegetation will regrow in cleared areas before the rest of the island is reached—locking Puerto Rico into a senseless, self-defeating game of regulatory whack-a-mole.
“Given the inefficiencies—and absurdities—of the present process, I urge the Trump Administration to take the following actions:
- Consolidate the 30 projects into a single program with unified oversight and review.
- Exempt the project from an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
- Streamline and accelerate environmental approvals under existing emergency and disaster relief authorities.
“The energy security of Americans in Puerto Rico must take precedence over Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
“Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your response.”