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Puerto Rico: Laws & Legal Considerations

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Rainwater harvesting is legal in Puerto Rico for both non-potable and potable use, common enough that cisterns are sold at local hardware stores, and it’s directly written into the building and plumbing codes rather than left as an unaddressed gray area.

RulePuerto Rico
Source water Rooftop or other catchment, for non-potable or potable use
Governing code Puerto Rico Plumbing Code, Chapter 13 ("Nonpotable Water Systems", §1301); Puerto Rico Building Code, Chapter 29 (§P2901.1)
Distribution marking Code requires purple piping to identify rainwater, graywater, and reclaimed-water lines
2024 public policy Law 91-2024 establishes rainwater harvesting as public policy and requires government agencies themselves to collect rainwater to reduce consumption

A 2024 law with compliance still in question

Law 91-2024 requires Puerto Rico’s own government agencies to collect rainwater, not just permits it for households. As of an August 2025 investigative report, compliance with that mandate was largely unverified, and legislators had filed a resolution to investigate why it hadn’t been implemented. The underlying legal right to harvest rainwater as a household isn’t in question; whether the government is actually following its own 2024 mandate is a separate, still-open question.

Water rights: public domain under civil law, not riparian rights

Puerto Rico’s water law starts from a fundamentally different premise than any state covered on this site: water isn’t privately owned alongside the land it touches.

ConceptHow it works in Puerto Rico
Basic framework Puerto Rico Civil Code, Title 31, Subtitle 2, Part IV ("Waters"), Chapter 153 §1311: rainwater, streams, and most surface and ground water belong to the public domain of the Commonwealth, held in trust for the population
Comprehensive statute Act No. 136 of June 3, 1976, the Puerto Rico Water Resources Act, governs development and use, prioritizing domestic and human consumption above other uses
Administering agency Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA), which issues permits and franchises for water development
Retail utility PRASA (Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, "AAA" in Spanish), created in 1945, serves roughly 97% of the population with water and 59% with sewer

Not riparian rights, and a live constitutional question about reliability

Every state’s water-law page on this site describes some form of riparian or prior-appropriation doctrine, private rights tied to land ownership or use history. Puerto Rico’s civil-code framework starts from the opposite premise: the water itself belongs to the public, held in trust, not to whoever owns the adjacent land. Separately, and directly relevant to a preparedness plan: a federal court ruled in October 2025 that PRASA’s failure to reliably provide water violates constitutional rights, a live legal finding about the same utility most households depend on for their primary water supply.

Concealed carry: a 2019 reform moved Puerto Rico from restrictive may-issue to shall-issue

Puerto Rico’s Act No. 168 of 2019, the “Puerto Rico Weapons Act of 2020,” took effect January 1, 2020, converting the territory from a may-issue system, where a license reportedly cost around $1,500 and was rarely granted to an ordinary applicant, to shall-issue.

RequirementDetail
Standard Shall-issue since Act No. 168 (2019), effective January 1, 2020
License structure A single unified license covers both firearm possession and carry, rather than two separate licenses
Processing The Puerto Rico Police Bureau must approve or deny an application within 30 days if statutory criteria are met
Minimum age / requirements 21+; background and criminal-record check; fingerprints; a certified firearms training course leading to a required Use and Management Certificate
Cost $200 license fee (5-year term); $100 renewal
Still restrictive relative to mainland shall-issue states No open carry; mandatory firearm registration remains in place

A 2019 reform, not a response to Bruen

Act 168 took effect in January 2020, more than two years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision reshaped concealed carry law nationally. Puerto Rico’s shift to shall-issue was a local legislative reform, not a court-driven response, worth getting right since the timing is easy to mix up with the broader post-Bruen wave of changes in other jurisdictions.

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