Millions of Puerto Ricans are without power again following the failure of a high-voltage transmission line that had been fixed by Whitefish Energy, a Montana-based contracting company that is under FBI investigation.
Power generation across Puerto Rico dropped from 40 percent to 18 percent on Thursday, according to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, Vox reported. The island is still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which made landfall in September.
As a result, a majority of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents do not have power again, including areas such as the capital of the island, San Juan.
Whitefish Energy signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority last month to help the island recover from the hurricane.
Instead of activating “mutual aid” arrangements with other utilities, PREPA decided to hire Whitefish — even though such agreements in Florida, Texas, and many other states have helped U.S. utilities rebuild following natural disasters.
The deal was canceled after growing outrage from U.S. lawmakers over concerns about the contract and Whitefish Energy, including how the small company was from the same hometown as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Whitefish denied that its repairs were to blame for the failure.
“None of the issues reported today with the outage have anything to do with the repairs Whitefish Energy performed,” a spokesperson for Whitefish told Buzzfeed.
