Bryan scheduled meetings in Washington on federal priorities as WAPA outages continued

Government House said on Sept. 18 that Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. left the territory that afternoon for Washington, D.C., where he was scheduled to meet with senior White House officials and members of Congress.

According to Communications Director Richard Motta, the meetings were to focus on federal policy matters including the rum cover-over extension, the reopening of the refinery on St. Croix and a waiver of FEMA's 10% cost-share requirement for disaster recovery projects.

Government House said Bryan also was scheduled to host a luncheon in Washington for the board of Jobs for America’s Graduates, where he served as national vice chair, and to receive an award from the National Health IT Collaborative for the Underserved. After the Washington trip, Bryan was scheduled to travel to Chicago to speak at the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference.

At the same briefing, VITEMA Director Daryl Jaschen said a tropical wave was expected to move off the west coast of Africa by Sept. 20 and could gradually develop into a tropical depression later that week or over the weekend. He said the National Hurricane Center gave the system a 70% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone within seven days, though the threat to the territory remained extremely low over that period.

Jaschen also said an excessive heat wave continued to affect the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. He said St. Croix had set heat records on 12 of the first 18 days of September, and that another heat advisory had been issued on Sept. 18.

Motta said rolling outages in the St. Thomas-St. John district followed damage on Sept. 16 to a primary electrical cable in Feeder 13 during construction work. He said the damaged feeder, which carries power from the Randolph Harley Power Plant to the Tutu Substation, left the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority relying on Feeder 12 alone, which did not have enough capacity to serve the full district load.

According to Government House, WAPA said outage rotations were expected to last about two hours and repeat every six hours until Feeder 13 was repaired. No estimate for full restoration was provided.

Official source: https://www.vi.gov/gov-bryan-to-meet-with-senior-white-house-officials-in-washington-d-c/