The Virgin Islands' Power Utility Owes $952 Million. It Hasn't Finished an Audit Since 2020.

The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA) is the sole electric and water utility for roughly 87,000 people across St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John.▸ It is also, in the words of its own turnaround consultant, "operating in [the] zone of insolvency" — a semi-autonomous public corporation that has not produced a completed, independently audited financial statement covering any fiscal year since 2020, even as its unaudited books show it still owes nearly $1 billion. On July 7, 2026, Governor Albert Bryan Jr. proposed an eight-member Financial Solutions Task Force to find a way out, one of three public entities — alongside the territory's hospitals and its waste-management authority — whose "long-term obligations" the governor says the central government can no longer keep absorbing through "repeated emergency support."

WAPA's most recent numbers are not audited — they're management figures the authority itself files with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's EMMA disclosure system, the same portal that carries its bond documents.▸ The latest filing puts the electric system's total liabilities at $952 million, including $152 million in revenue bonds and $183 million in other long-term debt, as of Dec. 31, according to Bond Buyer's review of the filing. That is down from the $1.081 billion the authority reported in an unaudited September 2023 filing — progress, but still a balance sheet nearly twice the size of the $498 million ceiling its own turnaround firm, Ernst & Young, warned it could hit by 2030 if fuel costs, customer losses, and financing risks all move the wrong way at once.

Fitch and Moody's each withdrew their credit ratings on WAPA's bonds in 2023, both citing the same problem: no audited financial statements for fiscal years 2021 through 2023.▸ About 40% of WAPA's outstanding debt has, as a result, operated without any credit rating at all. Ernst & Young's Jan. 29, 2025 turnaround report estimated WAPA needs roughly $375 million to resolve the immediate crisis, cover operational shortfalls, and settle $87 million in past-due payables — and that reconstructing the missing audits for fiscal 2021 through 2024 would itself take about 16 months from the point work began. That clock points to roughly mid-2026 — the same month Gov. Bryan announced the central territorial government had finally closed its own fiscal 2024 Single Audit, current for the first time since before the 2017 hurricanes, while writing separately to WAPA's leadership to "prioritize their outstanding audits." The main government caught up. Its power utility has not.

None of that uncertainty is on hold for ratepayers.▸ WAPA's residential electric rate — a base charge plus the Levelized Energy Adjustment Clause (LEAC), a dollar-for-dollar fuel-cost pass-through — was frozen at approximately 43 cents per kilowatt-hour through June 30, 2026, of which the LEAC fuel component alone runs 22 cents. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's most recent data puts the national residential average at 18.83 cents per kilowatt-hour in April 2026 — meaning WAPA customers pay roughly 2.3 times what the average American utility charges, for a system that still can't certify its own finances.

Part of that rate covers a fuel bill the territory has never fully closed out.▸ Over fiscal years 2021 through 2025, WAPA built up a $147 million deferred fuel-cost balance — costs incurred but not yet recovered through rates — against $77 million in fuel subsidies the central VI government provided over the same period. The roughly $70 million gap between the two has gone to neither ratepayers' bills nor the general fund; it sits on WAPA's books, one more unresolved line in an unaudited ledger.

The financial strain has a labor counterpart.▸ After Hurricane Ernesto hit in August 2024, WAPA CEO Karl Knight told local reporters that recovery was slowed by "a shortage of manpower in the Line Department," particularly in the St. Thomas district, where crews worked roughly five consecutive 12-hour-plus shifts to restore power. Building a lineman from scratch is not fast: WAPA's own apprenticeship takes about five years before an employee is cleared for "energized work," according to Chief Operating Officer Ashley Bryan, cited when the U.S. Department of the Interior awarded WAPA a $750,000 grant in March 2024 for lineman training through Northwest Lineman College. A second, $1 million grant from Interior's Office of Insular Affairs followed in May 2024 for broader technical training. Both build on a program that had, as of July 2022, produced just 30 graduates of WAPA's three-year, U.S. Department of Labor-certified PowerLine Workers Apprenticeship — the entire pipeline the authority has to replace linemen faster than storms and attrition remove them.

All liabilities and rate figures are unaudited management or regulatory filings, as WAPA has not closed an independent audit for any fiscal year after 2020; figures may be revised once audited statements for fiscal 2021 through 2024 are completed.