US president Donald Trump wanted the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial to look pristine. Photosynthesis had other plans.
Days after the Trump administration completed a $14.2 million (€12.3 million) project to coat the reflecting pool’s concrete floor with dark blue waterproofing material, clumps of algae dotted the surface Sunday and Monday, giving parts of the pool a green hue.
The pool was gleaming when it was refilled last week. The project aimed to fix two long-standing problems, leaks and algal blooms, before the country’s 250th birthday next month. But after several hot and humid days, the algae returned in force.
Representatives for the US interior department, which oversees the site, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Katie Martin, a spokesperson for the department, said in an email last week that workers were removing “residual algae from the supply lines which have been sitting dormant for eight weeks while construction has been taking place.”
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Martin added last week that the algae would be gone soon. “President Donald J Trump is an expert builder who has fixed the Reflecting Pool for good,” she said.
Trump said last month that the pool had been “filthy” and “dirty” for years. He said his changes would make the site “beautiful,” adding that the waterproofing material on its floor was a color called “American flag blue.”
To repair the pool, Trump’s administration awarded no-bid contracts to two hand-picked vendors, bypassing a legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what officials declared an urgent need. (The administration said the urgency was justified because of the nation’s 250th birthday party.)
The first no-bid contract went to a Virginia-based company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, to seal leaky joints between the pool’s concrete slabs and coat the slabs with the dark blue waterproofing material. The second went to Ohio-based Greenwater Services to add an upgraded water-purification system.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings finished its work June 4th, and the pool was refilled soon after. It is unclear whether the new purification system has been installed yet.
On Sunday, workers with the National Park Service waded in the reflecting pool and appeared to skim some algae blooms off the surface. They were joined by workers with Pearl Purity Water Solutions, a Maryland-based company that has held a contract since 2021 to treat the pool’s water.
Representatives for Greenwater Services and Pearl Purity Water Solutions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Monday, as park service workers continued to clear the algae, throngs of tourists strolled around the pool in the summer sun. Bonnie Garvin, a teacher from Monticello, Georgia, said she was unbothered by the green hue.
“We’re not swimming in it, so it’s not really an issue,” Garvin said.
But Jessica Lea, a therapist from Portland, Oregon, said she was disappointed by her first visit to the century-old landmark.
“It’s pretty swampy,” she said. “It could be cleaner. And I can’t see any reflecting.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
