The drama surrounding the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico just got a lot more interesting.

A picture was recently circulated showing millions of bottles of water that were never handed out to Puerto Rico’s citizens after Hurricane Maria last year.

Take a look:

BREAKING: What may be millions of water bottles. meant for victims of Hurricane Maria, have been sitting on a runway in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, since last year, according to @FEMA, which confirmed the news to me, late tonight, after pictures, posted today on social media, went viral. pic.twitter.com/jidGJAvCyJ

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 12, 2018

What Nobody Will Say

To those who paid attention to the news, it was very clear that some political officials in Puerto Rico were working against President Donald Trump during the recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria.

While FEMA was doing everything it could to help, people like Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz were too busy fighting Trump to help the people that needed it most.

That picture of the water is yet another example of how bad local officials were failing their citizens.

Commerce First

The reason behind local officials wasting the water was apparently economic.

Puerto Rico is a tourist destination. As such, local officials wanted businesses to open and thrive to start to rebuild the economy — but at what cost?

FEMA officials stated they had disbursed as much water as they could to every local agency that could store it.

But when businesses started to open, the “excess” water was no longer being accepted because local officials did not want to hurt the local economy any more than the storm had already done.

Storage Issues

The storage fees for the water were also starting to eat up relief money in huge chunks.

The estimated costs for storing the water were $300,000 per day.

To save money, the water was moved to a local airstrip for storage and covered in case it was needed again.

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This account seems to back up Trump’s October 2017 claim that the military was actually being used to distribute relief supplies because local officials were either unable or unwilling to do it.

Clearly, there was a breakdown locally.

Local officials need to be willing to work with FEMA for the good of their citizens. No exceptions.