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Major power blackouts have hit thousands of homes and businesses throughout the territory in recent days, as the V.I. Water and Power Authority prepares to publicly explain why the power grid remains so unreliable. WAPA representatives are scheduled to testify Wednesday when senators convene in the Committee of the Whole to hear an update “focusing on the series of outages that continue to plague the St. Thomas-St. John district. Additional topics will include the short-term and long-term plans to remedy the situation and improve reliability.” At a board meeting Thursday, WAPA CEO Karl Knight said the hearing “unfortunately has to do with what is being described as the rash of outages that we experienced in the month of September, that’s how the invitation viewed it.” Random blackouts hit the St. Thomas-St. John district throughout September. “We are going to be present to discuss the issues that we encountered, very specifically as to what the incidents were, what the causation was. Talk about the immediate improvements, or the remedy to those specific incidents, but then have a more general conversation about what is happening as far as operations,” Knight said Thursday. At the meeting, Knight also said the Authority is working to improve communications, using TikTok and other social media platforms to share information about operations. More major blackouts hit the St. Thomas-St. John district Friday, and St. Croix’s power grid failed Saturday. WAPA has released little information about the cause of the island-wide blackouts. And one of the few sources of real-time information, WAPA’s online outage map, also failed and as of Sunday night the website was still incorrectly showing that all 24,700 customers in the St. Thomas-St. John district were without power. Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., who campaigned on fixing WAPA, recently pledged to fix WAPA before the end of his term. Sen. Ray Fonseca recently called for a federal takeover of the utility, as many question whether Bryan will be able to bring tangible changes to WAPA in that short time span when he had years to do so. Meanwhile, WAPA board members voted Thursday to approve several infrastructure projects, including a $12.8 million contract with Haugland VI for the Feeder 9A underground project, which will move overhead electrical lines below ground. The project is funded through a 98% Federal Emergency Management Agency award, and the 2% local match is being provided by the Office of Disaster Recovery through the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant program. The Board also approved a $10 million increase and contract extension through June 2026 for Haugland VI’s disaster debris removal and disposal services. Arsenic-treated wooden utility poles were previously cut up and disposed of in the Bovoni Landfill on St. Thomas, which helped fuel a fire that burned for weeks in September 2023. Now, the poles are being shipped to Dubai for disposal as WAPA continues replacing wooden poles with composite poles. To date, 9,949 composite poles have been installed across the territory — 4,849 on St. Croix, 3,202 on St. Thomas, 1,711 on St. John, and 187 on Water Island. The WAPA board also voted to approve a negotiated insurance rate which lowered an initial 17.5% increase to 6%.
