President Donald Trump has blamed the problems plaguing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — including algae blooms and peeling paint — on “deranged” vandals armed with knives and fertilizer.
But newly uncovered government documents suggest the landmark’s deterioration was already underway and known to workers, even as Trump administration officials touted the multi-million dollar renovation as a resounding success.
According to documents obtained by The New York Times, workers found that algae-control devices installed in the basin, located next to the Lincoln Memorial, were not functioning properly. They also determined that cuts along the bottom of the 2,000-foot-long pool were unrelated to the “American flag blue” paint the president had ordered applied.
An Interior Department spokesperson declined to address questions about the documents, but told the outlet that the water in the pool was “clear” and “reflecting beautifully.”
The Reflecting Pool has been central to Trump’s broader effort to beautify and transform the nation’s capital. In April, he described the 103-year-old landmark as dilapidated and announced plans to resurface it with “American flag blue” paint. While he initially claimed the project would cost less than $2 million, the price tag has since exceeded $16 million, much of which went towards no-bid contracts.
Problems with algae blitzing devices
Soon after the $14 million refurbishment was completed in early June, visitors noticed the water had turned a vivid green, with clumps of algae floating across the surface.
Workers in neon vests were seen wading into the basin to remove the growth, while others poured hydrogen peroxide into the water in an effort to control it. On Tuesday, Trump attributed the unsightly issue to sabotage.
“They put, somebody said, fertilizer in the water,” the 80-year-old president told reporters in the Oval Office. “If you put fertilizer in the water you get algae, but somebody said they might’ve put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae.”
But on June 15 — the same day Trump described the pool as “beautifully new” — issues had already been identified with the pool’s nanobubblers, which are designed to break down algae using microscopic gas bubbles.
Workers observed that “one or two of the four temporary nanobubblers weren’t working at any given time because of problems with generators, and that the water was turning green,” theTimes reported.
The temporary purification system was installed by Greenwater Services, an Ohio company that secured a $1.7 million no-bid contract earlier this year. The firm, which had received only one other federal contract, is tied to a major Trump donor who previously found himself at the center of a bribery scandal.
Interior officials did not explain why the pool, which has faced algae problems for decades, was refilled before a permanent purification system was fully operational, according to the Times.
When reached by The Independent, a department spokesperson said: “Temporary nanobubblers have been running 24/7 since completion of the pool which includes filling the pool with water. Currently, in addition to the four temporary nanobubblers, there are four permanent nanobubblers running—and the pool is reflecting.”
Pool Cuts
Shortly after the algae appeared, visitors to the Reflecting Pool noticed another issue: chunks of blue paint had peeled away from the bottom and risen to the surface.
The “American flag blue” sealant had been applied by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm that received a no-bid contract worth at least $14.7 million.
Asked Tuesday whether contractors were responsible for the problems, Trump instead pointed to vandalism.
“We have a, I think 290, 300-foot slit right through it, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind,” he told reporters. “It’s not a lot of damage, but we’ll probably have to let the water out and refix it. They went in there with a knife.”
That same day, the White House said that six people had been arrested at the pool for alleged vandalism. One, a U.S. Olympian, called the charge against him “a completely unfounded accusation.”
Documents obtained by Times, however, appear to tell a different story.
On June 9, National Park Service workers determined that cuts in the pool were unrelated to the blue coating that has been peeling.
Instead, they identified two slices not in the paint itself but in the foam layer sandwiched between the pool’s expansion joints. The documents described them as “two 171-foot blade cuts,” though they did not specify how they were made.
Workers also reported “holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool.”
A spokesperson for the Interior Department provided a slightly different account.
“On June 9th, the U.S. Park Police were called to the Reflecting Pool for damage,” the spokesperson told The Independent. “Upon inspection by Park Police and NPS staff, the pool had multiple razor blade slashes alongside the edges. NPS ultimately determined that the slashes affected a nearly 350-foot stretch of the pool. Around the same time, NPS staff discovered another incident where fencing around the pool had been forcibly removed and thrown into the pool.”
On Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the pool would be drained to allow for repairs, potentially after the Fourth of July.
Congress Opens Investigation
House Democrats are now launching an investigation into the Trump administration's no-bid contracts with the two firms that performed work on the pool, including the money spent on the renovations that the president initially said would cost less than $2 million.
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee sent letters Wednesday to Atlantic Industrial Coatings and Green Water Solutions demanding a breakdown on the scope of their work, their communications with federal agencies and explanations for the apparent failures to prevent paint peeling and algae growth, among other questions.
“Donald Trump’s disastrous renovation of our national reflecting pool is his latest failed vanity project,” Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia said in a statement.
“The president should be focused on making life more affordable for the American people, not rewarding his loyalists with government contracts and wasting taxpayer money on failing projects,” he added. “We’re demanding answers straight from the contractors about the project’s failures.”
Virginia-based firm Atlantic Industrial Coatings had never previously won a federal contract before the government handed the company nearly $7 million in April, followed by an additional $6.2 million payment and payments of $1 million and $461,000 in the weeks that followed, according to federal spending records.
The National Park Service bypassed a competitive-bidding process by arguing that the need for renovations was so urgent that any delays would cause “serious injury” to the government, though it remains unclear what that “injury” entailed.
The owner of Green Water Solutions, which is tasked with cleaning algae from the pool, donated extensively to the president’s campaign and Trump-linked groups, including $250,000 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee in 2020.
“The American people deserve better management of their tax dollars,” Garcia wrote in his letters to the companies. “They also deserve to know how the contractors selected to do this work were vetted, and how they plan to address their shoddy work moving forward.”
He is asking for a response by July 8.
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