St. John has no power plant and no river. Its electricity and its piped water both cross Pillsbury Sound from St. Thomas, and most houses keep their own rain in a cistern. Play the film to watch the power reach every building on the island and the rain fill the cisterns, then read where each comes from.
St. John has no power station of its own, no river and no plant that makes its piped water. Its power and its piped water both come across Pillsbury Sound from St. Thomas; the rest falls on its roofs.
St. John has no power plant and no source of piped water of its own. Its electricity, about 10 megawatts, comes from WAPA's Harley plant on St. Thomas through submarine cables across Pillsbury Sound to the Frank Bay substation, and its piped water comes through a single 6-inch line under the same sound. Most homes also collect rain: Virgin Islands law requires a cistern of 10 gallons per square foot of roof on a one-storey house, and when a cistern runs dry a water truck fills it from WAPA's standpipe in Cruz Bay.
St. John has no power station. Its electricity is made with the rest of the St. Thomas–St. John district’s at WAPA’s Randolph Harley plant in Krum Bay, carried across St. Thomas to the East End, and sent under Pillsbury Sound to the substation at Frank Bay, south of Cruz Bay. From there it runs out along the island’s lines.
| What | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it is made | WAPA's Randolph Harley plant, Krum Bay, St. Thomas | WAPA |
| St. John's load | about 10 MW | WAPA RFP PR-06-23, 2023 |
| Cables | two 35 kV submarine cables to Frank Bay, from Great Bay (March 2004) and Red Hook (June 2011), about 18,000 ft each | WAPA RFP PR-06-23; VI Source 2004; St. John Tradewinds 2011 |
| Their state, April 2026 | the Great Bay line damaged several years ago, repair unfunded; the Red Hook cable about 14 years into a 50-year life | WAPA CEO testimony, 9 April 2026 |
| Backup | a 13.8 kV cable from Cabrita Point, lost in the 2017 hurricanes, reconnected in 2026 | WAPA, 7 July 2026 |
| Standby generation | four 2.5 MW Cummins generators (10 MW), about $8 million from FEMA, arrived 26 August 2026, due in service by January 2027 | vi.gov, 26 August 2026 |
| Planned | a 10 MW solar farm (VIElectron) and a St. John microgrid of solar, generators and batteries that could run the island apart from the Harley plant | WAPA CEO testimony, 9 April 2026 |
| Rooftop solar mapped | 36 arrays on St. John in OpenStreetMap (not a census of panels) | OpenStreetMap, 2026-10-15 |
The cables lie inside two cable areas NOAA charts across Pillsbury Sound (chart update L-1617/14, 2011), where anchoring is restricted and dragging prohibited. The charts do not say which cable lies where. Every cable and power line in the Virgin Islands is on the cables map.
Because the island hangs off the cables, a fault on the line puts out every customer at once. These are the island-wide outages in the record we checked.
| When | What happened | How long | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 2017 | Hurricanes Irma and Maria | the undersea line from St. Thomas was re-energised on 26 October; on 30 October about 88% of St. John's customers were still without power | U.S. Department of Energy situation report, 30 October 2017 |
| May 2024 | a fault on the St. Thomas side | all of St. John's roughly 2,600 customers out for about a day | VI Consortium; VI Daily News |
| 6–7 February 2026 | the Red Hook–Cruz Bay line tripped at 5:29 p.m. | back at 5:23 p.m. the next day; a burnt fuse, not the cable, which passed its tests | WAPA CEO testimony, 9 April 2026 |
| 14–17 March 2026 | WAPA says the Red Hook line was cut with a mechanical device at 9:57 p.m. | an abandoned line was put back and St. John was lit at 11:46 a.m. on the 15th; about three hours later a fire in the Red Hook junction box cut it again until just after midnight on the 17th. WAPA referred the cut to the FBI; at least one senator disputed that it was deliberate | WAPA CEO testimony, 9 April 2026; VI Consortium |
St. John makes no piped water of its own any more. WAPA’s water for both islands is desalinated from seawater at Krum Bay on St. Thomas and crosses Pillsbury Sound in one pipe.
| What | Source | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it is made | Seven Seas Water's seawater reverse-osmosis plant at the Harley plant, Krum Bay: 3.3 million gallons a day for St. Thomas and, by pipe, St. John (in service June 2013) | Seven Seas, 2023 |
| The feeder tank | the Donoe tank, 5.5 million gallons, 580 ft up, serving the East End and St. John for about 7 to 10 days | WAPA testimony, 29 January 2026 |
| Across the sound | one 6-inch submarine waterline: "the sole source of potable water to St. John"; an 8-inch line (5,600 ft to Cabrita Point, 11,000 ft under the sound, $8.5 million) is planned | WAPA, 27 March 2022 |
| Storage on St. John | four tanks, 1,390,403 gallons at most, 8 to 9 days of supply | WAPA, 2022 |
| In the 2026 drought | nearly 1 million gallons in storage against a more typical 1.4 million, about five days | St. Thomas Source, 3 September 2026 |
| Before the pipe | WAPA ran its own desalination plant on St. John, about 155,000 gallons a day against a peak demand of 200,000 (2001) | St. John Source, 20 April 2001 |
WAPA does not publish where its four St. John tanks stand, which streets its pipes reach, or the waterline’s route on the seabed. The film draws the line on the route WAPA gave in 2003, Red Hook to Frank Bay, as a schematic.
About 44 inches a year over the island, says the USGS, and St. John has no permanent stream to hold any of it: what the roofs do not catch runs off or sinks in. NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals at its two stations put the dry season in February to April and the wettest months in September to November.
| Station | A year | Driest month | Wettest month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coral Bay | 45.86 in | February, 1.62 in | November, 7.17 in |
| East End | 40.91 in | March, 1.33 in | November, 6.09 in |
NOAA flags both stations as having fewer years than a full normal (Coral Bay 14 to 21 years a month, East End 19). There are no normals for Cruz Bay or Bordeaux Mountain.
Virgin Islands law (V.I. Code title 29, § 308) asks for a cistern of at least 10 gallons for every square foot of roof on a one-storey house, apartment or hotel, and 15 gallons on two storeys or more, unless the building is on WAPA’s water. A 2019 Department of Health study found 90% of Virgin Islands homes use cistern water every day. One inch of rain on one square foot is about 0.62 gallons.
| Roof | Per inch of rain | A year at 44 in, before loss | Cistern by law, 1 storey | 2+ storeys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 sq ft | 312 gal | 13,714 gal | 5,000 gal | 7,500 gal |
| 1,000 sq ft | 623 gal | 27,429 gal | 10,000 gal | 15,000 gal |
| 1,500 sq ft | 935 gal | 41,143 gal | 15,000 gal | 22,500 gal |
| 2,000 sq ft | 1,247 gal | 54,857 gal | 20,000 gal | 30,000 gal |
| 3,000 sq ft | 1,870 gal | 82,286 gal | 30,000 gal | 45,000 gal |
Our estimate, from the building footprints OpenStreetMap maps on St. John: a footprint stands in for the roof that feeds a cistern. OSM is not a census and misses some buildings, and not every roof is guttered to a cistern.
| On St. John | Our estimate |
|---|---|
| Buildings on St. John in OpenStreetMap | 3,650 |
| Their footprint, the roof that feeds a cistern | 6.03 million sq ft |
| Rain on those roofs per inch | about 3.8 million gallons |
| Per average year (44 in), before any loss | about 165 million gallons |
| By the USGS rule of 50 gal a day per 1,000 sq ft | about 301,000 gallons a day |
| Cistern the law asks of those roofs (one-storey rate) | about 60 million gallons |
| WAPA's storage on St. John, for comparison | 1,390,403 gallons at most |
A dry cistern is filled by a water hauler. The trucks fill at WAPA’s standpipe in Cruz Bay and drive the water out to the cistern; haulers are licensed by DPNR’s Division of Environmental Protection, and WAPA listed 38 water haulers among its St. Thomas–St. John customers in 2022. In July 2026 the line of trucks at the Cruz Bay standpipe sometimes stretched down the road, and WAPA said standpipe sales had gone “through the roof” from March before dipping in August. After a hurricane WAPA closes the standpipe to keep the water for the clinic and the police station.
No current price per load on St. John was published in the sources we checked, so none is given here. Ask the hauler for the load size and price before ordering.
No. St. John has no power plant of its own. Its electricity, about 10 megawatts, is made at WAPA's Harley plant on St. Thomas and carried across Pillsbury Sound by submarine cables to the substation at Frank Bay, Cruz Bay. Ten megawatts of standby generators for St. John arrived in August 2026 and are due in service by January 2027.
Through submarine cables under Pillsbury Sound: two 35 kV cables laid from Great Bay in 2004 and from Red Hook in 2011, and a 13.8 kV cable from Cabrita Point that was reconnected in 2026. In April 2026 WAPA said the Great Bay cable had been damaged several years earlier and its repair was unfunded. NOAA charts the cable areas, where anchoring is restricted and dragging prohibited.
Because the whole island hangs off the cables from St. Thomas. When the line is cut or trips, every customer goes out together: in May 2024 a fault on the St. Thomas side darkened the island for about a day, and on March 14, 2026 WAPA says the Red Hook line was deliberately cut, which left St. John without power for most of the next two days.
From the sea off St. Thomas. Seven Seas Water's reverse-osmosis plant at Krum Bay makes it, the Donoe tank above St. Thomas's East End stores it, and a single 6-inch submarine waterline carries it to St. John, which WAPA calls the sole source of potable water to the island. WAPA has four tanks on St. John holding at most about 1.39 million gallons.
Most do. Virgin Islands law (V.I. Code title 29, § 308) requires a cistern of at least 10 gallons per square foot of roof on a one-storey house and 15 gallons on two storeys or more, unless the house is on WAPA's water. A 2019 Department of Health study found that 90% of Virgin Islands homes use cistern water every day.
One inch of rain on one square foot of roof is about 0.62 gallons, so a 1,500 sq ft roof collects about 935 gallons per inch. St. John gets about 44 inches of rain a year (USGS), so before any loss that roof catches about 41,000 gallons a year; the USGS rule of thumb is about 50 gallons a day per 1,000 square feet in an average year.
You call a water hauler. The trucks fill at WAPA's standpipe in Cruz Bay and deliver to the cistern. In the 2026 drought the trucks queued down the road there, and WAPA said standpipe sales went through the roof from March. Haulers are licensed by DPNR.
February to April. NOAA's 1991–2020 normals put the driest month at Coral Bay in February (1.62 inches) and at East End in March (1.33 inches); November is the wettest at both. The island has no permanent stream, so the dry months are when cisterns run low.