A years-long holdup in replacing utility poles on National Park Service lands in St. John is moving toward resolution, with V.I. Water and Power Authority officials saying an agreement between the National Park Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has cleared the way for the work to proceed.
“A few months ago, an agreement was met between the National Park Services and FEMA in order to move forward,” Maxwell George, WAPA's director of project management, told the authority's Governing Board on Thursday. One condition imposed by NPS, he said, is that composite poles installed on park property must be green.
To accommodate that requirement, WAPA sought an increase of up to $2,486,940 to its existing contract with Trident Industries, bringing the total contract value to $31,392,750 and extending its completion timeline through the end of 2027. WAPA's Sept. 24 meeting agenda identifies the matter as a “Cost & Time Increase to Trident for Composite Pole Supply,” while the authority's active-contract listing confirms that Contract SC-12-23 is held by Trident Industries.
“We have been amending the contract as we get permission to expand where we put in the composites,” WAPA CEO Karl Knight explained. “There’s a portion of the project we just couldn’t proceed on because we didn’t have authorization to put the poles in the Park Service.”
“This is all FEMA funded,” Mr. Knight clarified.
The St. John portion of WAPA's composite-pole program has been stalled for years. In September 2023, WAPA reported that 1,711 of a planned 1,960 composite poles had been installed on St. John, placing the island at 87 percent completion. Unlike the other islands, however, St. John's target completion date was listed simply as “Pending NPS Assessment.”
Nearly a year later, in July 2024, WAPA was still reporting 1,711 installed poles on St. John and said amendments for additional poles inside Virgin Islands National Park were in progress while the authority awaited the National Park Service's environmental assessment. As recently as October 2025, WAPA again listed St. John's installed total at 1,711 even as the territorywide number of composite poles had climbed to 9,949.
Mr. Knight welcomed the opportunity to finally advance that portion of the project. “We want to kind of close out these composite pole projects, they’ve sort of been lingering and lingering for years now,” he said.
The territory's move toward composite poles dates back to the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. WAPA says its Composite Pole Project began in 2017, with the stronger poles intended to increase grid resilience against high winds, corrosion, rot and other environmental threats. In February 2018, the Consortium reported that then-Gov. Kenneth Mapp planned to use $50 million from a federal housing grant to expand the installation of composite poles as part of the territory's effort to harden its electric system.
Progress has varied by island. Mr. Knight told board members Thursday that just one of the four islands has been fully completed. WAPA's previous updates identify Water Island as that completed project, while work remained unfinished on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John.
WAPA is now attempting to bring the remaining composite-pole contracts to a close. “We’re on a push now to try and close these contracts,” Mr. Knight said, adding that being able to resume work on St. John would help move the authority toward that goal.
The Governing Board unanimously approved the contract amendment Thursday, authorizing WAPA to move ahead with the additional green composite poles for National Park Service lands. WAPA's post-meeting announcement subsequently said the board had advanced the FEMA-funded Composite Pole Project on St. John as part of a broader package of grid-resilience work.
“This will blend more in with the theme throughout the park,” Mr. George said of the green poles.
