Long before a comedian’s joke about Puerto Rico made headlines and sparked the left, the U.S. island territory was grappling with the toxic problem at the heart of the joke: contamination and pollution.

For decades, Puerto Rico has faced microplastic pollution on its beaches, contamination of drinking water by industry, and air pollution and coal ash from power plants that supply the island’s electricity.

The legacy has been so enduring that last year the Biden’s Justice Department announced the creation of a special task force investigate and “prosecute violations of federal law harming the environment, wildlife, and human health, and related fraud, waste, and abuse” in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands region American. These facts were ignored in the fake outrage over a comedian’s jokes about Puerto Rico at former President Trump’s rally last night.

“Environmental justice and ensuring that all residents of Puerto Rico enjoy a healthy environment, free of hazardous wastes and other pollutants, is a top priority of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice,” said U.S. Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow for the District of Puerto Rico. at the time. “This task force will combine and leverage the resources of numerous federal agencies to aggressively enforce civil and criminal environmental laws.

Failure to comply with Clean Air Act standards

Just last month, the Biden The Environmental Protection Agency announced that two communities in Puerto Rico – one in San Juan and the other in Guayama-Salinas – failed to meet Clean Air Act standards for sulfur dioxide, a power plant byproduct dangerous to the human respiratory system . The finding of “non-compliance” will force electric utilities in these regions to quickly reduce air pollution.

THE environmental group Earth Justice also reported Puerto Rico for dangerous amounts of coal ash – the byproduct of coal-fired power plants that is so toxic it is supposed to be stored in specially regulated landfills or containment ponds. But in Puerto Rico, large sites where coal ash was dumped — often as landfill decades ago — were exempt from even the most recent rules issued this summer, sparking concern among environmentalists.

“The revised rule does not address coal ash that was dumped off-site or used as fill, which has happened in dozens of locations in Puerto Rico,” Earth Justice recently wrote.

Denying the facts: a “legacy of contamination”

“The longer enforcement is delayed, the more dangerous contaminants enter Puerto Rico’s air and water and the more difficult the cleanup will be,” said the group warned,

Last year, ABC News published a detailed article about how a special tax break unique to Puerto Rico pushed large industries into the territory, like pharmaceutical manufacturing, drying up freshwater supplies and leaving a legacy of contamination. “Puerto Rico has at least 19 contaminated sites that are on the national cleanup priority list,” ABC reported. “Five of the sites on the National Priority List can be partially attributed to the pharmaceutical industry, according to the EPA.”

For most of the decade before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office, liberal groups defended the plight of Puerto Rico and lambasted the slow pace of action to clean up pollution there. The pressure has been so great that even the EPA’s top official was forced to make a special trip there in 2022.

“We’re hearing about environmental injustices that have been happening for decades that we urgently need to address,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told Reuters during his trip. “And now we have the resources and the will to begin to address some of these concerns.”

Regan’s trip included a visit to a neighborhood near a coal-fired generator where residents were affected by coal ash. But industry and power plants are not the only ones to blame.

The tourism industry, vital to the island’s economy, has also sparked concerns about plastic pollution on once-pristine beaches.

In March 2021, the newspaper Direct science published a “marine pollution bulletin” after scientists visited six beaches in Puerto Rico and found plastic contamination on all six. “Microplastics have been detected on all six sandy beaches in Puerto Rico,” the alert states. “Differences in the proportions of microplastics among the six beaches appear to reflect various sources of pollution.

“The results showed levels comparable to other beaches around the world, some classified as highly contaminated,” the statement added.

After two hurricanes decimated Puerto Rico’s energy grid a few years ago, local residents and experts took matters into their own hands to force the U.S. government to do more after decades of inaction. Additionally, a 2023 Government Accountability Office report found that because the U.S. Navy had used the eastern part of Vieques, PR, as a firing range for 60 years and dropped 5 million pounds of munitions each year, the area is one of 26 sites in the Puerto Rican archipelago that remain on the Department of the Interior’s National Cleanup Priorities List due to extraordinary cancer rates.

“It is government agencies that should check whether the water is polluted and whether the air quality is adequate for the people in the area,” said Dr. Osvaldo Rosario, an environmental chemist in Guayama. said Energy Information Network last year. “It’s immoral to know this is happening and not want to document it because it’s politicized.”