The Martín Peña Channel (Spanish: ''Caño de Martín Peña'') is a body of water in
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the ju ...
. The similarly named
Martín Peña is a neighbourhood, with informal housing, adjacent to the channel.
The channel runs from
San Juan Bay in the west to
Laguna San José and
Laguna Los Corozos
Laguna (Italian and Spanish for lagoon) may refer to:
People
* Abe Laguna (born 1992), American DJ known as Ookay
* Andrés Laguna (1499–1559), Spanish physician, pharmacologist, and botanist
* Ana Laguna (born 1955), Spanish-Swedish ballet dan ...
in the east. It separates the
barrio
''Barrio'' () is a Spanish word that means " quarter" or " neighborhood". In the modern Spanish language, it is generally defined as each area of a city, usually delimited by functional (e.g. residential, commercial, industrial, etc.), social, a ...
of
Santurce on the north side from
Hato Rey Norte,
Hato Rey Central
Hato Rey Central is one of the 18 barrios of the municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico. With a population density of 16,155.3 per square mile. It has a land area of 1.03 sq mi and a 2010 Census population of 16,640.
Hato Rey Central was a barri ...
, and
Oriente on the south side.
Improvement initiatives
The channel has had a history of being strewn with trash, which breed mosquitoes, and a health hazard for its nearby residents in the Martín Peña subbarrio. Due to the narrowing of the channel over time, the area is subject to frequent flooding, including raw sewage from buildings with insufficient sanitation.
The
Caño Martín Peña ENLACE Project Corporation (Spanish: ''Corporación ENLACE del Caño Martin Peña'', English acronym ''ENLACE'') is a
corporation owned by the Puerto Rico government, created to improve the local sewage system. As of 2016, ENLACE has spent $120 million from the territorial government on sewage improvements. Implementation of a $600 million ecosystem restoration plan that will dredge the canal depends on resolution of the
Puerto Rican government-debt crisis
The Puerto Rican government-debt crisis was a financial crisis affecting the government of Puerto Rico. The crisis began in 2014 when three major credit agencies downgraded several bond issues by Puerto Rico to "junk status" after the governmen ...
and federal funding for assistance from the
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it ...
and the
.
In 2015 the area won an UN award to fix the area.
In 2017 the community continued demanding the betterment of their community
with a campaign stating, "don't look at me, look at the channel" ( es, no me mires a mi, mira al canal). According to the community's campaign website there remained 26,000 people affected by the polluted channel.
After
Hurricane Maria
Hurricane Maria was a deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the worst natural disaster in recorded history to affec ...
on September 20, 2017, the canal caused flooding in eight barrios nearby for weeks and was the most impacted community of San Juan.
In August 2019, a resolution was passed to improve the infrastructure of Martín Peña.
See also
*
Caño Martín Peña Nature Reserve
*
List of rivers of Puerto Rico
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby uni ...
References
External links
EPA Urban Waters Partnership / Caño Martín PeñaCaño Martín Peña ENLACE Project Corporation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin Pena Channel
Geography of San Juan, Puerto Rico
Channels of the United States