President Trump is taking on algae — and his liberal critics — as he races to restore the historic Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations.
Mr. Trump is the third consecutive president to encounter problems restoring the 104-year-old, rectangular pool in the heart of the National Mall.
Unlike President Obama, who was unable to successfully restore the pool after spending $35 million on renovations, or President Biden, who rejected a plan to make needed repairs, Mr. Trump is not getting a pass.
Instead, the left, aided by dogged media coverage of the pool’s problems and cost, gleefully framed the peeling paint and algae blooms as a symbol of alleged Trump administration failures.
“Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went. The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, commenting on a video showing blue paint peeling from the floor of the Reflecting Pool last week.
Mr. Trump announced that contractors would drain and repair the pool, just days after the project was completed at a cost of more than $14 million.
The left said Mr. Trump hired contractors outside the normal bidding process and accused the contractors of inadequately sealing the bottom of the pool before applying the “American Flag Blue” paint.
Contractors also failed to solve the algae problem that has plagued the pool for years, critics said. The Reflecting Pool renovations included $1.74 million for a nanobubble algae filtration system installed by Green Water Solutions, an Ohio-based company owned by Trump donor John J. Cafaro.
Mr. Trump is not blaming the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, or Green Water Solutions.
On Monday, the president accused vandals of using a knife or box cutter to rip a 300-foot gash in the bottom. He also said vandals had dumped chemicals into the water.
Mr. Trump told reporters that five people had been arrested in connection with vandalizing the pool and five others were under investigation.
“Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?” Mr. Trump said.
“But I saw it, they cut it, they cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor, they cut it, and then they lifted it, they pulled it, and that’s what it is,” he said.
The Washington Times has reached out to the Interior Department for details about the damage and the arrests.
Among those arrested was three-time U.S. Olympian David Hearn, who told ABC News he “was able to reach out and touch” the “loose end” of the pool’s blue coating. U.S. Park Police arrested him on a misdemeanor vandalism charge and held him for five hours.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said it “has received only a handful of citations, which we will review.”
The office provided no further details.
News outlets have descended on the Reflecting Pool to document the algae and peeling paint.
Mr. Trump accused ABC reporter Jonathan Karl of “sticking his hand in the Pool and trying to rip the rubber off the surface.”
Workers began draining the pool Monday in preparation for repairs.
Meanwhile, the president’s most vocal critics compared the troubled project to Mr. Trump’s other problems, including the Iran war they accuse him of unnecessarily starting and the detection of the once-eradicated screwworm that now threatens livestock in the Southwest after the Trump administration cut preventive funding.
Robert Reich, who was President Clinton’s labor secretary, called the “mess” at the Reflecting Pool “a metaphor for Trump’s many other messes.”
Rep. Dave Min, California Democrat, said the Reflecting Pool problems are “another example of the abuse of power that we’ve seen time and again from Trump and his lackeys, with ZERO oversight from House GOP.”
Saturated media coverage has stoked the outrage on the left.
Rep. Debbie Dingell, Michigan Democrat, said her constituents are obsessed with the Reflecting Pool renovation problems.
“Algae, that’s all anybody talked [about] at home this weekend. They were outraged,” Ms. Dingell, who represents the liberal enclave of Ann Arbor, told CNN.
Mr. Trump took on the Reflecting Pool renovations as part of a D.C. beautification project ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday.
Statues and fountains across the federal city have been cleaned and restored, and the president has ordered the construction of a triumphal arch between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
“All of them were bad, but some were just absolutely horrible. Graffiti, you couldn’t even see the stone. They’ve all been fixed. We also fixed the Reflecting Pool. In fact, if you go over there right now, it looks very good,” Mr. Trump said.
The 2,029-foot Reflecting Pool has long been a headache for the federal government, with leaking pipes, a sinking foundation and other problems.
In 2012, less than a month after the completion of a two-year, $35 million renovation during the Obama administration, algae returned with a vengeance.
The National Park Service attempted to mitigate algae growth by increasing water ozone levels, but it became impossible to eradicate, partly because of an Obama administration decision to refill it from the Tidal Basin rather than the city’s drinking water supply, National Park Service officials told The Washington Post in 2012.
Carol Johnson, a National Park Service spokesperson at the time, called the algae bloom “a direct consequence of the fact that this is a green project.”
A decade later, the Biden administration explored major renovations to address the pool’s long-standing structural problems, but the president passed on the $100 million proposed price tag.
Mr. Trump said Monday that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden spent a combined $147 million on unsuccessful efforts to restore the Reflecting Pool.
Mr. Trump decided to take on the project and signed with Atlantic Industrial Coatings in late March. The company was chosen in part because it could install the Rhino polyurea coating selected by the Interior Department.
On Sunday, company officials said they identified some areas in the Reflecting Pool that require repairs.
“These areas are a very small part of the massive 7-acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” officials said. “As soon as it’s feasible for the Park, the pool will be drained and AIC will be back to make those needed repairs as part of the warranty.”
Mr. Trump said workers are vacuuming out the algae and will have to let the water out to fix “two little areas where they were cut.”
He said his Reflecting Pool project was far less expensive, took less time and was far more successful than those of his Democratic predecessors.
“I spent two months, maybe less, and I have a better product now,” he said. “I can’t help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up.”
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