On rainy days, Blanquita Santiago Arroyo stacks empty beer cases under the furniture of her nearly empty house. Her refrigerator the third shes bought in 10 years and washing machine already sit atop three sets of worn cinder blocks.

Three-foot-high watermarks remind her its unsafe to sleep in her wooden bed, even when its lifted on milk crates. As bedtime approaches, Santiago Arroyo sets up in a plastic chair, where she tries to rest until the morning comes.

There comes a time where youre exhausted, and you see everyone sleeping, and you cant go to bed because you have to keep an eye out for how high the water will rise, she said.

The constant threat of flooding makes Santiago Arroyo yearn to leave her home of more than 30 years. But its the water that forces her to stay.

Its going to be very difficult to sell the house, she said. Because once you tell the people what the problem is, they wont buy it, unless they have money and are thinking of investing.

Her grandmother purchased the property in the 1980s, and the house flooded for the first time three years later. Santiago Arroyo and her family were taken to a shelter.

I almost drowned because the water was so high, she recalled.

In Calle Martin, where her home stands, the storm drains have for decades been clogged with trash and sediment from El Cao Martn Pea, a now-stagnate tidal channel that once flowed across San Juan.

El Cao, as many call it, stretches for nearly 4 miles, connecting the San Juan Bay with the San Jos Lagoon, the two biggest bodies of water in Puerto Ricos capital. Hurricane Mara pushed fallen trees and remnants of houses into the channel, adding to the decades of sedimentation, garbage and untreated water.

The polluted channel is the root of numerous problems for 25,000 residents in the eight surrounding neighborhoods San Juans most densely populated area.