The enormous fiasco of Trump’s reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial: from Avatar to Shrek

Donald Trump bombarded his social network for months with boasts about the renovation of the reflecting pool at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, one of Washington D.C.’s most iconic monuments, the site of Martin Luther King’s historic 1963 speech and a familiar image in countless movies. The U.S. president bragged that he would fix the pool so it would look spectacular by July 4, to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence from the British crown. A total of $14.2 million has been spent fixing the pool’s alleged leaks and painting it blue. And not just any blue — the dark blue of the U.S. flag. In this way, the Republican president said, the Washington Monument—the tall obelisk at the center of the city—would be reflected in the pool like a postcard image.

But the Oval Office occupant’s idea has been an outright fiasco. Two days after the waterproofing and dark-blue repainting works were completed, the water began to take on a greenish hue as clusters of algae formed on the surface. By the weekend it had turned an almost fluorescent green.

Dozens of tourists and visitors walked the area on Wednesday and photographed the greenish pool while several National Park Service workers tried to clean algae from the basin, which holds about 25.5 million liters of water. A whitish foam has begun to appear in the vast trough as a few ducks swim in the murky water.

Jokes: from Avatar to Shrek

The failed renovation of the pool, which measures 2,030 by 167 foot (about 620 meters long by roughly 50 meters wide), has triggered jokes and mockery among Washington’s placid residents. Hosts of the major late shows have made also made fun of the incident.

“He wanted to paint it American flag blue,” Jimmy Kimmel, the comedian and host of his eponymous ABC show, said this past Tuesday. “Now, not even a week later, it’s already completely green; it’s Mexican flag green,” he added. Another leading comedy host, Jimmy Fallon, declared during his NBC opening monologue: “Trump was going for ‘Avatar’ and he ended up with ‘Shrek’.”

The reflecting pool’s flop would have remained an anecdote if not for Trump himself. For weeks he boasted that he could fix the pool. In dozens of posts on his Truth Social network he claimed to be the only person who could do it and criticized his predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, for spending public money to renovate the area without preventing leaks or algae. He described the iconic pool as a “filthy” and “dirty” place.

He boasted about his work

“The Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work, and they failed,” he wrote in mid-May. On June 3 he announced the completion of the renovation. “For the first time since 1922 [the reflecting pool is] going to work properly,” he posted on Truth. A week later, the pool is a hopeful green.

Some experts say the darker blue helps warm the water and encourages algae growth. Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, the ministry responsible for overseeing the renovation, said last week that the algae were “residual” and came from supply pipes that remained inactive during the renovations. However, the algae have multiplied despite the National Park officials’ futile efforts.

The White House has avoided commenting since the greenish hue appeared, but in recent days a legion of officials in waders and using skimmers—machines that vacuum debris from the water—have been trying to remove the algae. On Tuesday they began another treatment by pouring dozens of liters of hydrogen peroxide into the pool.

Hydrogen peroxide

Martin tried to downplay the issue. “Due to deploying the advanced nanobubbler technology, the algae is dead and being vacuumed up as we speak,” she told CNN. “This nanobubble technology has managed to eliminate the algae blooms that have affected every pool reopening since 1922,” insisted the Interior Department spokeswoman, who works under Doug Burgum. Martin told The Guardian that days after the reopening following the Obama administration’s works, the pool had been “messed up and disgusting.”

The pool has taken on an increasingly murky green hue, fueling doubts about whether the presidential goal of having the pool look beautiful by July 4 can be met. Nobody in Washington is counting on that anymore.

The shadows extend to the contracting process. The White House awarded the work directly to two suppliers without following the legal public tender process, citing the urgency of the work and claiming they had to be ready for the 250th anniversary, even though Trump has been in the Oval Office for a year and a half.

One of the no-bid contracts was awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia company. That firm was responsible for sealing leaking joints between the concrete slabs of the pool and coating them with a dark-blue waterproofing material. For weeks, passersby on the National Mall—the long park that links the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial—saw scores of workers pressure-spraying the pool floor dark blue.

The other contract went to Greenwater Services, an Ohio company. It was hired to install an advanced water purification system.

No-bid contracts

The reflecting pool fiasco is another failure in Trump’s efforts to leave his mark on the city. After he’d put his name on the Kennedy Center, the city’s arts complex, a judge ordered it removed because changes to the facility’s name are a matter for Congress.

He is also facing serious legal obstacles to building a giant triumphal arch between Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. Clearly, Washington seems to be resisting the builder born in Queens.

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