Luquillo's Costa Azul pump station rehab: 12 filings, no build permit
The rehabilitation of the Costa Azul sanitary sewer pump station in Mata de Plátano, Luquillo, has filed 12 infrastructure recommendation requests since August 21, 2024, and no construction permit. The latest, filed September 9, 2026, was sent back for corrections.
The Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados, the island's water and sewer authority, is the owner named on the filings. They place the station on the property of Condominio Dolphin Tower at East, a condominium with 60 apartments and penthouses on its lot.
An infrastructure recommendation request is filed with the permits office before a construction permit or consultation, to check whether water, power and other services can serve a project. The work is at an early stage, and a filing does not show that any work has started.
One of five stations in the east
Costa Azul is one of five stations in the authority's Rehabilitación de EBAS Fase 1 Región Este program, under capital project number CIP 3-00-9104. The other four are Brisas del Mar, also in Luquillo, Santa María in Ceiba, Alturas de Hato Nuevo in Gurabo and El Industrial in San Lorenzo.
All five won a categorical environmental exclusion on filings dated April 28, 2025, and approval of a legal pre-consultation on filings dated July 8, 2025. None of the five has filed for a construction permit of any type. A parallel south-region program, CIP 4-00-9104, covers six more stations.
Two years of infrastructure reviews
Six of the Costa Azul requests were approved; the latest of them was filed on June 25, 2026. The run since then has gone less smoothly: a request filed on September 1, 2026 came back incomplete and the September 9 one was sent back for corrections. Two incomplete and two sent back for corrections in all, and one filed on April 22, 2026 is pending.
Most of the lot, 86.1%, lies in flood zone AE, the high-risk zone with a 1% chance of flooding in any year; the other 13.9% is in the 0.2% annual-chance zone. The next step on record for the station would be a construction permit filing.
