NY Times Reports There is Still a ‘Major Underlying Problem’ With Reflecting Pool — Despite Trump’s Costly Renovation

(Photos: Samuel Corum and Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ignores a “major underlying problem” that will still allow algae to grow and cover up its new “American flag blue” color, according to a new report in The New York Times.

The Trump administration awarded a no-bid contract to Virginia firm Atlantic Industrial Coatings that has jacked up the price from the original $1.8 million to $13.1 million in an effort to finish the job before America’s 250th birthday celebrations.

But as the Times pointed out, the company was contracted to reseal the expansion joints and add blue-tinted coating to the pool — not to fix the leaky pipes connecting the pool to a treatment plant that filters and purifies the water.

“Twelve-inch pipes under the surrounding parkland are responsible for moving large volumes of water from the pool to the treatment plant and back again,” the report said. “When it works, that system is supposed to filter all of the pool’s four million gallons every three days or so. But these pipes often break and leak. The Park Service has said their plastic walls fail under pressure from the surrounding soil.”

To deal with broken pipes, the water has to be disconnected from the filtration system, causing the pool to sit stagnant until the individual pipes are fixed, the report said.

During Trump’s first term, the Park Service said “the only solution was to replace thousands of feet of pipe. But it has still not done so,” the report said, adding, “The Trump administration has said it plans to have that work begin in the fall, but has declined to give details.”

Trump has said that the blue coating will last for 40 or 50 years and “there’ll be no leaks, there’ll be no anything,” but the Times report refuted that statement.

Unless the underlying problem with the pipes is fixed, experts told the Times that “the algae could come back.”

“If that happens, the pool’s newly waterproofed blue floor could again be invisible under a layer of green murk,” the report said.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!