Las Picúas pump station in Río Grande: 7 filings, no build permit
A new wastewater pump station planned for Calle Las Coles, Rem 3, Bo. Mameyes, Río Grande belongs to a plan by the Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados, Puerto Rico's water and sewer authority, to shut down the private sewage plant that serves the Las Picúas sector. The pump station and the sewer project around it logged seven filings with the permits office between July 27 and October 14, 2026, and none of them is a construction permit.
The pump station, filed as Nueva EBAS Las Picuas, is described as a new station for wastewater and its associated pipelines in the Las Picuas area. Its most recent decided step is an infrastructure recommendation request filed on July 27, 2026 and recorded as approved. The authority filed another infrastructure recommendation request for it on October 6, 2026, with no status recorded yet.
The project first reached the permits office on October 18, 2024, when an infrastructure recommendation request and a health and safety recommendation request were both filed; both are recorded as approved. An infrastructure recommendation request checks with the utilities whether a project can be served before it moves on to a consultation or a construction permit.
What the sewer project would change
A second set of filings by the authority, for improvements to the Las Picúas sanitary sewer system (CIP 3-15-9000) on a property about 313 meters away on PR-968, spells out the plan. The authority would stop operating the private Las Picúas sanitary sewer plant, build a new pump station that it will own and operate, send the sector's wastewater to it, and lay a force main tied to a sewer manhole on the discharge of its EBAS Palmer station.
Those filings began with an environmental recommendation filed on August 18, 2026. A legal pre-consultation filed on September 18 is recorded as approved, and a use recommendation request filed on September 23 is recorded as pre-approved. An infrastructure recommendation request filed on October 4 is recorded as incomplete, and a pre-consultation on use recommendations filed on October 14 has no status yet.
The idea is older than both sets of filings. An infrastructure recommendation request titled Improvements to Las Picuas Sanitary Sewer System, filed on September 24, 2024 for a property about 132 meters from the pump station site, proposed eliminating a private sewage treatment plant and treating its effluent at a nearby plant of the authority. That request was archived; its case received a new filing on September 8, 2026, recorded as pending.
The pump station site
The property covers 7,869 m2 (84,701 sq ft). The Puerto Rico Land Use Plan classifies it as specially protected rural land of ecological value, and 38.8% of it lies in flood zone AE, the high-risk flood area; the remaining 61.2% is in the 0.2% annual-chance zone. No sale or listing of the property is on file.
No construction permit has been filed for the pump station or for the wider sewer project under any permit type, so both remain at the early review stage.
