SALINAS, Puerto Rico Diana Santi was used to stocking the shelves of her corner grocer in this tiny town with canned and preserved foods from the continental United States.

She never understood why the fertile flatlands in this part of Puerto Ricos southeast coast werent used to grow more local crops she always had to pay a markup for shipping costs. But shes had a more pressing problem: Keeping the perishables she sells from spoiling in the power outages that still plague the most populous U.S. territory seven years after Hurricane Mara laid waste to the Caribbean archipelagos electrical grid.

When solar energy developers started staking out the open fields a few years ago, she thought things might improve. But as nearly 150,000 panels went up in neat rows on hundreds of acres around her town, Santis problems worsened. Her utility bills kept going up. Her power still went out almost daily.

Then came the deluge. Her barrio known as El Coqu, named for the chirping frog that serves as Puerto Ricos ubiquitous mascot had avoided devastating flooding in previous storms. As Hurricane Fiona made landfall here in September 2022, however, brown floodwaters gushed into her Colmado Santiago market, destroying $3,000 of merchandise and depositing so much mud it took her family four days to clear the muck.

It was devastating, Santi, 46, said one afternoon in July.

The project, known as Ciro One, is the largest solar and battery array in Puerto Rico, and appeared to redirect the flow of water directly into El Coqu. And its just the beginning of this regions transformation into the islands hub of photovoltaic energy.

Another solar farm more than twice the size is now underway just down the road, backed by nearly $1 billion in federal loans. Legal experts say the location and the process that went into locating the projects flouted Puerto Ricos conservation laws that, if followed, might have helped avoid the issues now mounting. Worse yet, Puerto Ricos secretary of agriculture, Ramn Gonzlez Beir, has a direct financial stake in the upcoming solar farm, leasing some of the land his agency is supposed to protect to the developers.

Were being flooded, Santi said. Theyre flooding us with panels.