Coal ash confirmed in dredge material deposited next to Cimarrona

On July 22, 2026, Radio Isla reports that residents of the Cimarrona community, in Guayama, and environmental organizations denounced that the material deposited without notice next to their houses, coming from the dredging of Bahía Las Mareas, contains coal ash. They demand of the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources an immediate halt and removal, for violation of Act 40-2017, which prohibits depositing coal ash in Puerto Rico. Cathy Rivera, a community spokeswoman, says that in late May dozens of trucks arrived with a dusty material that enters vehicles, windows, and homes.

Dr. Osvaldo Rosario López, retired University of Puerto Rico chemistry professor, sent samples to the Eurofins laboratory in Florida. The report, according to Radio Isla, confirmed arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, and vanadium, among other metals, a combination he describes as the signature of coal-combustion residues such as those of the AES Puerto Rico plant. Osvaldo Rosario López concludes that color, texture, origin, and metals leave no other reading. The presence next to homes and a creek, he says, is a risk the government cannot ignore.

Residents place the material in the sedimentation lagoons of the Bahía Las Mareas dredge, a project that, according to Governor Jenniffer González Colón's announcement, seeks to widen the channel for coal barges toward AES. During an inspection there were no permit signs or dust control. Act 40-2017, amended by Act 5-2020, makes disposing of that ash a felony, with fines of no less than $25,000 for each day of violation or up to five years in prison. Those sanctions come from the note. This magazine does not apply them.

The complaint is not limited to Cimarrona: the material, according to residents, also went to an Empresas Aguirre Inc. quarry on PR-7705, to the DRNA Visitor Center in Aguirre (Salinas), and there are reports of use at an asphalt plant in Salinas and a gravel pit on Highway 15 in Guayama. DRNA appears as the addressee of the demand and, at the same time, as neighbor of the deposit in Aguirre. Jenniffer González Colón appears for the dredging announcement, not with an answer in this piece.

Radio Isla does not publish the milligram-by-milligram concentrations of the Eurofins report. The list of metals and the demand for removal stand. The reader who wants that complaint has the URL at the foot.

Source: Radio Isla. https://radioisla.tv/confirman-presencia-de-cenizas-de-carbon-en-material-del-dragado-de-guayama-depositado-junto-a-comunidad-cimarrona1/