Climate Change Raises Growing Infrastructure Concerns in Puerto Rico

Veteran Puerto Rican Engineer warns of Escalating Risks

Standing before colleagues in the institution where he began his career, a veteran engineer delivered a clear warning: Puerto Rico is already facing the realities of climate change, and the engineering community must lead the response.

At a recent Magistral Conference on Climate Change at the Engineers Association, speaker José Domingo Pérez Muñiz blended personal history, global context, and a call to action. He commended the group for bringing attention to a subject that, as he put it, “has been certainly diminished in importance,” even as its consequences become more evident worldwide.

A Global Crisis With Local Consequences

He stressed that climate change is not daily weather shifts, but a long-term change in the planet’s systems. He cited over 170 years of temperature records showing dramatic global increases. Referring to the earliest years of his data, he said, “Those red bars are triple what the variation was at the century’s start.”

In some regions, he added, warming has already reached 1.6°C, a threshold scientists consider dangerous.

Pérez Muñiz, founder and president of Caribe Tecno, dismissed claims that climate change is cyclical or exaggerated. He argued the evidence is everywhere: more intense rainfall, longer droughts, record glacier loss, and rising seas. “When it rains more, it rains more for real,” he said. “When it rains less, we have longer droughts.”

Puerto Rico is no exception. Island heat indices have reached 115°F, and more than half of its sandy beaches have eroded. The aging infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable. For example, the Palo Seco Power Plant is very close to the shoreline.

“Eighty percent of our generating capacity is in areas susceptible to flooding,” he warned, calling it a structural risk that has already manifested in recent storms.

Pérez Muñiz traced the modern climate movement to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the only international agreement ever signed unanimously by all nations. He highlighted the role of Nobel laureate Mario Molina, whose research on ozone-depleting chemicals reshaped global environmental policy. “The seminal work of Dr. Molina,” he said, “was about the impact of chlorides in the stratosphere.”

From Montreal to the Paris Agreement and through successive COP summits, the world has tried to curb emissions and support vulnerable nations. He noted that recent negotiations have pushed industrialized countries to triple their support for developing nations, even as global tensions have slowed the pace of fossil fuel reductions.

A New Reality for Puerto Rico’s Built Environment

For engineers, the message is clear: traditional design assumptions—like the “100-year storm”—no longer hold. “Rainfall once seen in a century can now occur within a decade,” he warned, highlighting the urgent need to revise codes, models, and professional standards.

He urged the profession to rethink drainage systems, raise building foundations, and include future flood risks in energy projects. He recalled a Carolina project where developers raised elevations by 60 centimeters before regulations changed. “The people who live in those projects are very happy,” he said, “because not even their cars get water up to the tires.”

The island’s coral reefs, its first defense against storm surge, are in crisis. Globally, 84% of reef zones have been affected by bleaching. Locally, he praised Puerto Rican experts for world-class research on reef loss and coastal risks.

A Global Pattern of Displacement and Loss

The engineer connected Puerto Rico’s challenges to global patterns. In the Mekong Delta, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, rising seas threaten agricultural land and food security. He recalled a Canadian engineering forum where projections showed that a quarter of the Mekong’s cultivable land could disappear within 25 years. “You won’t have land to live on,” he remembered a colleague saying, “nor land to grow the country’s food.”

Even wealthy nations are not immune. He cited recent reports about the city of New Orleans, where sea-level rise could raise water levels by 3 to 7 meters, swallowing up to 100 kilometers of land. “New Orleans is no longer a viable city,” he said, referencing studies from Tulane University.

The Human Toll

Pérez Muñiz stressed that climate change affects lives, not just infrastructure. Puerto Rico’s experience with Hurricane María remains a case study in vulnerability. He noted that the most precise estimates suggest over 4,600 indirect deaths, mainly due to loss of power, water, refrigeration, and healthcare. “Puerto Rico cannot afford for what happened in María to happen again,” he warned.

Beyond engineering solutions, he argued that Puerto Rico needs political will and public participation. “Citizens have to learn to vote,” he said. “Not for someone who comes here to give a speech someone prepared for them, but for someone who listens.”

He called for reducing energy, water, and plastic use. He urged the public to join hearings and protect vulnerable communities. He also pushed for climate education starting in first grade. “A citizen who learns to conserve the environment from childhood,” he said, “will help mitigate and promote adaptation.”

A Blueprint for Action

Among the concrete measures Pérez Muñiz proposed were: adopting a climate-adjusted building code; creating a national forum for resilient infrastructure; implementing cooling centers for residents during extreme heat; accelerating distributed energy generation; enacting legal reforms to protect the maritime-terrestrial zone; and making rainwater capture mandatory in all new developments. He emphasized that each of these actions requires urgent and coordinated effort from engineers and policymakers alike.

He stressed that Puerto Rico must use every available funding source—federal, local, and international—to modernize its infrastructure.

Puerto Rico’s engineers face a defining moment requiring leadership and renewed public duty. “Failure is not an option,” he said.

José Domingo Pérez Muñiz warned that climate change is intensifying risks to Puerto Rico’s infrastructure during a magistral conference hosted by the Puerto Rico College of Engineers and Land Surveyors.