President Donald Trump’s budget-busting, $13.1 million project to spruce up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool won’t fix a major problem — and could leave its new “American flag blue” basin covered in green slime, according to a report.
While the work is aimed at stopping leakage from the 6-acre pool’s expansion joints, it reportedly doesn’t address the plumbing system that connects the pool to a water treatment plant that purifies the 4 million gallons of water needed to fill it.
The underground 12-inch plastic pipes often break and leak as a result of pressure from the surrounding soil, according to The New York Times.
“It’s almost impossible to maintain the water level that is required to make the pool reflective,” Kym Hall, a former National Capital Area director for the National Park Service, told The Times. “It’s like pouring water into a colander.”
And when the pipes leak, repairing them requires that the pool be cut off from the filtration plant — often for weeks at a time — leaving the water stagnant and encouraging the growth of green algae on its bottom during warm weather.
The Interior Department, which is in charge of the project, didn’t immediately return an inquiry from The Independent on Monday, but Burgum on Sunday told CNN’s State of the Union that “everybody should be celebrating President Trump getting a project done.”
Burgum also accused former President Obama of spending “more money” on an earlier, $35 million renovation project that he said left the Reflecting Pool “closed for two years.”
“There was no outrage then. There should be outrage,” he said. “That thing turned into an algae-driven slew. And this thing is going to be fantastic.”
During Trump’s first administration, the park service reportedly determined that the only way to address the issue was to replace thousands of feet of piping, but nothing was done at the time.
The current administration has said it plans to start work on the pipes work in the fall, but hasn’t provided any details.
Until then, it’s possible that summer algae blooms could cover the newly sealed basin, experts told The Times.
In addition, efforts to seal the expansion joints failed two tests in mid-May, although Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday said on social media that the “final materials” to replace the joints “passed testing flawlessly last week and this week” and that the work would be finished by Saturday.
Burgum’s statements came six days after the project’s original deadline, The Times said.
Trump, who’s spearheading a series of self-aggrandizing renovations and development projects around the nation’s capital, apparently became fixated on the Reflecting Pool shortly before Thanksgiving last year, leading to a major cleanup two days before the holiday.
National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands was scheduled to personally oversee the removal of foul-smelling dead leaves and bird droppings from the pool’s bottom with the agency’s so-called Super Scrubber maintenance vehicle, according to a copy of his calendar obtained by The Times.
The next day, Trump suggested renovations would likely begin immediately, writing on social media, “Study it hard because you won’t be seeing this Biden filth and incompetence much longer.”
In April, Trump announced that the Reflecting Pool’s basin would be sealed and covered with coating called “American flag blue” at a cost of $1.5 million, saying, “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road.”
But the first contract, for $6.9 million, was awarded without competitive bidding to Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings — which never previously held a federal contract — after Trump’s administration used an exemption intended to prevent “serious injury, financial or other, to the government,” The Times reported last month.
At the time, a White House spokesperson said the project was “being completed at ‘Trump speed’ to ensure the iconic landmark is totally restored ahead of the 250th celebrations” on the Fourth of July.
In addition, The Times reported that the cost had ballooned to $13.1 million and also that the contract included a 20 percent profit margin, compared to a typical rate of 6 to 12 percent.
An Interior Department spokesperson told The Times that the extra spending was needed to “expedite the timeline of completing the leak prevention coating project — more people, more materials, more equipment and longer hours ahead of our 250th” Independence Day.
During recent testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee, Interior Secretary said he “wasn’t familiar” with the contractor but insisted it wasn’t Trump’s “guy,” who Burgum described as “just a citizen who cared about” the project and offered “free advice.”
On Friday, Trump angrily defended the work on the Reflecting Pool, writing on social media that it’s “one of the most visited and photographed Pools in the World and, when we took it over, it was a disgusting, garbage strewn dump that leaked, smelled, and was an embarrassment to our Country, and two of our Greatest Presidents.”
