The radio telescope at Arecibo was once the largest single-aperture telescopes in the world, at 305m/1000ft across. During its lifetime it was surpassed by the 500m aperture spherical telescope (FAST) in Guizhou, China, which is still in use. Interferometry makes "virtual" large-aperture radio telescopes possible by combining inputs from separate radio telescopes. Such as the Very Large Array (US), VLTI, and ALMA, and the planned Square Kilometre Array.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_telescope https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/technology/interferometry/
The government had already decided to close the telescope. It collapsed afterwards. It was decrepit and had been falling apart for a long time. It hasn't had a real scientific use since the the 70s and 80s.
It has scientific use, as the post says, with radio astronomy, you can combine the input of multiple antennas to do very long baseline measurements for large arrays. And there are several current experiments and collaborations trying to combine inputs from antennas across the world for extremely long baseline measurements. the direct images of black holes that have been coming out are due to one of these collaborations. You could argue that the upkeep and repairs weren't worth it compared to some other project being funded, but specifically having a really large and good antenna operating distant from any other arrays would be very useful. For some of these larger baseline experiments placement on the globe really matters, which is why SKA and several other new arrays are being built in Africa. I think if starting from scratch and could place it anywhere there would be better locations, but having something in the Eastern Caribbean would be very useful.
Edit: But everyone saw this coming and had already written this off, so most Astrophysicists and Astronomers aren't surprised or too upset about this, AFAIK.