By JOHN McCARTHY / V.I. Free Press News Reporter
ST. CROIX — The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA) is once again asking the suffering public to swallow a heavy dose of public relations spin. Following Tuesday’s district-wide blackout and the subsequent chaotic scramble over rotational outages on St. Thomas and St. John, the cash-strapped utility pointed the finger at “transportation delays” from its diesel supplier and sudden, coincidental generator trips.
But local mariners, diligent readers, and frustrated residents aren’t buying the excuses.
While WAPA claims it has successfully “secured” an emergency maritime delivery of fuel from Puerto Rico, local observers have spotted tankers sitting idle and anchored offshore. Historically in the territory, when fuel supplies “dry up” or shipments are delayed, it isn’t because the transport vessels have lost their way in the Caribbean Sea. It is because WAPA has failed to clear the wire transfers required to pay its vendors.
By operating on a razor-thin, prepayment-to-prepayment financial margin, WAPA has created a fragile grid where a single delayed transaction plunges thousands of people into darkness.
The consequences of this financial tightrope walk do not fall on WAPA’s highly paid executives, nor do they truly impact the wealthy who can easily transition to private backup solar and automatic generator systems. Instead, the burden is borne entirely by the working-class families of the Virgin Islands. These are the residents who are left in dark, sweltering homes, watching hundreds of dollars in hard-earned, perishable groceries spoil on a weekly basis.
It is time for WAPA and Government House to stop hiding behind passive public relations jargon and technical scapegoats. The people of the Virgin Islands deserve the financial truth, reliable generation, and a utility that pays its bills before the lights go out.
1. The Timing is Completely Backwards
- The Announcement: Acting Governor Tregenza Roach announced a delayed 10:00 a.m. opening for government offices in the St. Thomas/St. John District as a result of the massive WAPA power disruptions.
- The Reality: As the commenter Emelda LaPlace pointed out, “Isn’t it a little late for that announcement???” Many public sector employees start their commutes long before 8:00 a.m. to get to work on time. Publishing a “delayed opening” notice mid-morning—long after people have already navigated transport, sat in traffic, and arrived at dark, hot, powerless offices—is completely useless. It shows a severe lack of real-time crisis coordination between WAPA and the executive branch.
2. The Direct Result of WAPA’s Generation Failure
The reason government offices were forced to delay opening in the first place highlights the severity of Tuesday’s grid collapse:
- WAPA had a planned 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. outage for the Feeder 13 Bypass Project.
- But at 7:45 a.m.—exactly when people were starting their workdays and government offices were supposed to turn on the lights—two major generating units at the Randolph Harley Power Plant tripped, plunging the entire district into a complete blackout.
- Instead of recognizing the district-wide grid failure immediately, Government House lagged hours behind on the official directive, leaving civil servants and the public completely in limbo.
3. ‘Unbelievable’ but Entirely Predictable
Commenter Karen Hauer’s one-word reaction—“Unbelievable”—sums up the collective exhaustion of the territory. This late-to-the-game administrative handling is the perfect reflection of how the local government manages the wider WAPA crisis. Rather than proactively planning for the fallout of a severely unstable grid and a hand-to-mouth diesel supply, the administration continues to operate on a reactive, delayed delay loop.
It is a glaring public relations and operational failure from Government House, and our readers are rightfully calling them out on it in real time.
