PUERTO RICO WATER SCHEDULE NOW MORE RELIABLE THAN ITS EXCUSES
Utility unveils 48-hour rotating shutoffs, calls it proactive management in the same breath as announcing a committee to study the problem.
San Juan residents began timing their showers with Olympic-style stopwatches this week as the island's water utility rolled out a rotating 48-hour rationing schedule so precise that local officials say it makes the DMV look like a Swiss train system. Over 180,000 customers are now on a strict on-again, off-again cycle, giving families exactly one guess per day as to whether today is a 'wet' day or a 'stand very still' day.
The utility has responded to the crisis by launching a leaderboard graphic ranking residents by 'most efficient shampoo-to-rinse transition,' a metric nobody asked for but everybody is now obsessively tracking. Neighbors compare times like marathon splits, with one man reportedly shaving nine seconds off his personal best by pre-lathering the night before. Officials call this civic engagement. Residents call it Tuesday.
'This is proactive infrastructure management, entirely unrelated to decades of deferred maintenance,' said utility spokesperson Marisol Vega, unveiling a new blue-ribbon committee tasked with studying the formation of another committee. Vega added that the rotating shutoffs reflect 'a bold new era of water stewardship,' a phrase locals recognize as agency-speak they've heard, verbatim, roughly every drought since 1998. 'We've survived worse from these guys,' one resident shrugged, in a tone that somehow made things sound worse, not better.
