Although Puerto Rican by birth, former V.I. Water and Power Authority Director Alberto Bruno-Vega left his mark on the Virgin Islands. He died recently at age 73 in Puerto Rico.

“On behalf of our WAPA family, I extend sincere condolences to the family of Mr. Bruno-Vega,” current WAPA Director Hugo Hodge Jr. said in a press release. “He was greatly loved by his WAPA family and his accomplishments at the authority will be remembered forever.”

Bruno-Vega served as the authority’s director from 1989 to 1995 and again from 2002 to 2007. When he resigned the second time, he said it was to spend more time with family in Puerto Rico.

In his resignation letter to the WAPA board, he wrote, “I will always carry and cherish three flags wherever I go, namely the American flag (my nation,) the Puerto Rican flag (my home) and the Virgin Islands flag (my home away from home).”

Bruno-Vega said, “These flags will be predominantly displayed in my home office and elsewhere but, most importantly, in my heart.”

While at WAPA, he and the territory’s Public Services Commission had numerous interactions.

PSC spokesman Lorna Nichols said, “We’re saddened by his passing. He paved the way for some of WAPA’s alternative energy conscious activities.”

During Bruno-Vega’s first tenure, WAPA struggled to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. On the job just three months when the hurricane wrecked the territory’s power distribution system, he oversaw the $100 million recovery and rebuilding efforts carried out in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and utility crews from the mainland.

Bruno-Vega returned in 2002 to meet an era in which the world had seen unparalleled increases in the price of fuel oil resulting in financial hardship on the utility and its customers.

A graduate of the University of Puerto Rico with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a certificate in power systems engineering from Power Technologies in Schenectady, N.Y., he worked most of his career in the electrical generation field.

Bruno-Vega started his career at the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, where he worked in numerous jobs including that of director from 1979 to 1982.

He left to take a position with Consolidated Edison, New York City’s privately owned electric utility company, where he stayed for seven years before leaving to take the director’s post with WAPA.

Between WAPA stints, he served as executive vice president of Bermudez & Longo, the largest electrical and mechanical contractor in Puerto Rico. He returned to that position when he left WAPA the second time. He also served as a director of the American Public Power Assoc., a group of more than 2,000 public utilities, and on its Emergency Assistance Task Force.

Veteran newscaster Lee Carle phoned the Source to talk about his memories of Bruno-Vega. He said that he was ahead of his time in that he pushed for photovoltaic, wind and natural gas power – all methods in use or now on the front burner.

Carle said it was Bruno-Vega’s contacts on the mainland that enabled him to bring in outside help to recover after Hurricane Hugo.