President Donald Trump’s plan to clean up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool might be as effective as his promise to drain the swamp.
On Friday, The New York Times published a report that found the president’s renovation of the historic landmark ignores a “major underlying issue” that could make the whole project a costly waste of money: There’s no plan to fix its leaky pipes.
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The crux of the issue seems to be that the body of water has been plagued with algae for years — with passersby describing it as “really sludgy,” “disgusting” and smelling of “wet dog” to CNN in 2012.
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In April, Trump announced a plan to make the pool great again by scrubbing and grouting its granite and then covering it with an “American flag blue”-hued waterproof coating, reminiscent of an actual swimming pool.
Virginia firm Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded a no-bid contract to do the work, which Trump initially said would cost $1.8 million. Yet, it was reported in May that the company jacked up the price to $13.1 million in an effort to finish the job before America’s 250th birthday celebrations, per Trump’s request.
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The Times points out, however, that Parks Services told Trump during his first term that “the only solution” to the pond scum issue “was to replace thousands of feet of pipe.” These pipes, that lay underground in the surrounding parkland, are meant to move large volumes of water from the pool to a treatment center — where algae and bacteria is killed through a filtering and purification process — and then pumped back into the pool.
The problem, according to the Times, is that Park Services says the pipes’ “plastic walls fail under pressure from the surrounding soil” causing them to break and leak. When the pipes leak, the pool has to be shut off, and water is cut off from the filtration system for weeks, giving the algae plenty of time to slime.
The firm currently working on the pool, however, is not working on the pipes but are concentrating on a “system of expansion joints around the pool’s concrete slabs.”
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“The slabs grow and shrink with temperature fluctuations,” the Times reports. “So the seals need to stretch while remaining watertight.”
These seals have repeatedly failed for decades, so the company currently working on the pool is “stuffing pieces of solid foam into the gaps” and then adding the “American flag blue”-tinted sealant compound on top in an attempt to lock it in.
Yet, the Times notes that “previous analyses of the pool indicated that water mainly leaked out between the slabs, not through them.” The outlet also obtained documents that show the firm’s efforts to stop leaking this way has failed twice.
On Monday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum boasted on X that “The Reflecting Pool is now 100% coated with American Flag Blue sealant!”
“Another major milestone in restoring this landmark and ensuring it lasts for generations of Americans to celebrate our great history in our nation’s capital,” he wrote.
But Burgum’s celebratory message could be premature, considering experts maintain that if the pipes aren’t fixed, the pond weed will rear its ugly head once again.
“If that happens, the pool’s newly waterproofed blue floor could again be invisible under a layer of green murk,” the Times wrote.