Antonio S. Luchetti was a Puerto Rican

Puerto Rican people

A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...

 engineer and dedicated public servant, through whom comprehensive electric service was established in Puerto Rico via the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority (PRWRA) and, later, via the public electric company, Fuentes Fluviales.

Luchetti was instrumental in establishing the Utilización de las Fuentes Fluviales in Puerto Rico. Utilizacion was established to provide electric services not provided by private companies. Luchetti saw that private companies operated inefficiently and worked for the government to acquire, in 1937, the first of the three electric companies operating in the Island, the Ponce Electric Co., and to build hydroelectric plants at Carite and Toro Negro

Toro Negro State Forest

Toro Negro State Forest is one of the 16 state forests in Puerto Rico. The forest is located in the central region of the island. The forest covers 6,945 cuerdas of mountains, with heights that include Cerro de Punta, the highest peak in the island...

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Early years and training

Antonio S. Luchetti (born Antonio S. Otero Luchetti) was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...

 in 1888. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 in 1910.

History

Despite the fact that Puerto Rico had no coal or oil for energy development, there were many rivers to supply electrical needs via hydroelectricity. Luchetti was at time executive director of the Utilización de las Fuentes Fluviales (later known as the Autoridad de las Fuentes Fluviales, or AFF, and now called the Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica or PREPA). He judged that what the government of Puerto Rico needed to do at the moment was to purchase the three private electric companies operating in the island: the Ponce Electric Co., the Porto Rico Railway Light & Power Company, and Mayagüez Light, Ice & Power Co. He estimated the cost at $7 million.

Efforts to create Energy Authority

Luchetti next reasoned that for the power infrastructure to be built, it was necessary to issue government bonds. Prior to 1938, these bonds would have been tied to the insular government’s ability to pay. Fortunately, on June 25, 1938, the U.S. Congress amended the Organic Act of Puerto Rico to authorize public corporations to issuance of bonds without such condition. Luchetti tries to take advantage of this federal initiative, but encountered the opposition to this plan when the US-appointed Governor of Puerto Rico Blanton Winship vetoed the project in 1938 on the grounds that it was incompatible with the 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act

Jones-Shafroth Act

The Jones–Shafroth Act was a 1917 Act of the United States Congress by which Puerto Ricans were collectively made U.S. citizens, the people of Puerto Rico were empowered to have a popularly-elected Senate, established a bill of rights, and authorized the election of a Resident Commissioner to a...

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Fuentes Fluviales created

Luchetti did not give up on his efforts to create the power infrastructure he envisioned tha Island needed. He continued trying to revive this project through efforts in the U.S. Congress, but due to the reluctance of the insular Legislature, the project was unsuccessful. However, on May 2, 1941, the newly appointed Governor Guy J. Swope

Guy J. Swope

Guy Jacob Swope was an American teacher, accountant, and Democratic politician. His career included one term as a United States Congressman in the Seventy-seventh United States Congress, serving as a Director in the United States Department of Interior under Franklin D...

 finally gave his nod and signed the law creating the Autoridad de las Fuentes Fluviales. The creation of Fuentes Fluviales made possible the development of electric energy Puerto Rico needed in order to make possible the Operation Bootstrap

Operation Bootstrap

For other uses, see Bootstrapping and Bootstrapping .Operation Bootstrap is the name given to the ambitious projects which industrialized Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century.-History:...

 industrialization that started to take shape in the late 1940s.

Luchetti died in 1958, having seen his dream become a reality.

Legacy

In Arecibo, Puerto Rico, there is a new high school named in his honor.

In Yauco there is a 108-hectares man-made lake named after him.

In Bayamon, there is an industrial park named after him.

See also

• List of famous Puerto Ricans