Recovery in the U.S. Virgin Islands: Progress, challenges, and options for the future

This report provides analysis to help the U.S. Virgin Islands accelerate its recovery from 2017’s Hurricanes Irma and Maria by identifying recovery goals, recovery accomplishments, and challenges. The authors focused on crosscutting capacities needed for implementation, infrastructure, and the economy and public services and provide 76 recommendations to enhance recovery efforts, including steps to support implementation.

Research questions 

• What are the main goals for recovery in the USVI, and what progress has been made to date toward those recovery goals?
• What challenges and barriers have delayed progress?
• What actions can territory and federal agencies take to improve recovery processes?

Key findings

The USVI has increased its management, fiscal, workforce, and supply-chain capacity

• It has started permanent improvements to infrastructure, public buildings, and housing and restored education and critical health care services. Recovery in the tourism sector has remained slow.
• Key accomplishments include creating the Offi ce of Disaster Recovery to oversee recovery, designating federal block grant funds for public projects, training staff, using contractors to boost territory government management capacity, making plans to upgrade existing infrastructure and to rebuild and redesign schools and health care facilities, identifying funding options to restore housing, and working to restore natural and cultural resources.

Recommendations

• Expand management, fiscal, workforce, and supply-chain capacity by creating clear governance structures and processes for recovery, expanding liquidity and financing options (e.g., creating a separate recovery spending budget), streamlining contracting by developing templates and approval mechanisms for procurement contracts, enabling individual territory agencies to hire needed staff with incremental reimbursement or creating special recovery positions, offering training and credentialing to build capacity among local workers, using prefabricated housing to support an increase in the number of off-island workers, and enhancing supply-chain efficiency by increasing berth and stackyard capacity at ports and extending operating hours.​
• Rebuild and restore infrastructure by improving management of infrastructure services through a project focus that addresses both hurricane damage and legacy challenges; coordinating interdependencies across agencies, including consolidating administration of federal funding programs under one agency; increasing housing stock by speeding up repairs and increasing the use of modular stock; and raising awareness by improving communication and leveraging leadership capabilities, perhaps through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) field coordinator position.
• Help economic and public service sectors “get back to normal” by establishing a vision of the future for tourism, education, and health in the USVI; streamlining approval for tourism businesses; expanding use of telemedicine; focusing on individual well-being and opportunities, including improved quality of education and health and increased access to mental health services; expanding services for vulnerable populations (e.g., by creating a registry of people who would require special assistance); and supporting management capacity steps for relevant agencies.