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'A travesty': 20% of Puerto Rico still lacks water as FEMA ends hurricane aid

Director of FEMA in Puerto Rico, Alejandro De La Campa, said the island has made enough progress and no longer needs the emergency relief.
Young residents gather at their family's home, still without electricity, on Christmas day on December 25, 2017 in Morovis, Puerto Rico.

Florida's two senators on Tuesday criticized the federal government's decision to cut off food and water shipments to Puerto Rico, even though 20% of the island still lacks running water more than four months after Hurricane Maria.

The aid will "officially shut off" Wednesday because of progress restoring power and basic services on the Caribbean island, Alejandro De La Campa, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Puerto Rico, told NPR.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., called the decision "a travesty" considering that a third of the island remains without power after Maria made landfall on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 hurricane.

"I am absolutely shocked," Nelson said on the Senate floor. "I don't want to mince words here. We have a full-blown humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico right now."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said FEMA's decision is another example of how the U.S. continues to neglect the people of Puerto Rico and ignore responsibilities to help them.

"There are still a lot of people that wonder why are we giving foreign aid to Puerto Rico," Rubio said. "You have to remind them, Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its residents are U.S. citizens."

Several members of Congress have invited guests to President Trump's State of the Union Address on Tuesday night to highlight the island's slow recovery.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is bringing San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, who has publicly battled with Trump over the government's recovery efforts.

Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., will bring a Tampa woman who helped ship supplies to Puerto Rico and created a group to help islanders who relocated to Florida. And Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., will bring a college student who is one of 300,000 Puerto Ricans who have relocated to Florida since the storm.

De La Campa said the island has made enough progress and no longer needs the emergency relief. The agency said it has distributed more than 65 million liters of bottled water (costing $361 million) and 58 million meals and snacks (costing $1.6 billion).

Because of that assistance, De La Campa said "things are going back to normal."

"If we're giving free water and food, that means that families are not going to supermarkets to buy," De La Campa told NPR. "It is affecting the economy of Puerto Rico. So we need to create a balance."

FEMA said in a statement that it will continue to help volunteer agencies and private groups that are helping rural communities still in need of basic services.

"The commercial supply chain for food and water is re-established and private suppliers are sufficiently available that FEMA provided commodities are no longer needed for emergency operations," the statement said.

Nelson and Rubio said those efforts haven't been nearly enough.

In December, the House of Representatives passed an $81 billion emergency aid bill to help hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas, and wildfire victims in California. That money has not been approved by the Senate. Disaster relief has fallen victim to the ongoing spending battles in Washington that led to a three-day government shutdown, and another shutdown is possible if Congress can't strike a deal by Feb. 8.

Rubio said that inability of Washington to adequately help victims of natural disasters shows how clueless the government can be about the long-term damage felt by people.

"It would be a mistake to say that hurricane damage is over. The effort to address it ends the minute the trees are removed from the road and the roofs are tarped," Rubio said. "It goes on for a while."

Contributing: Ledyard King

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