President Donald Trump pushed for renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool so it would be American flag blue for the country’s 250th birthday celebration this summer. Instead, he got algae bloom green.
This is one of several expensive beautification and construction projects Trump has taken on since reassuming office, including his $600 million ballroom.
The Obama administration also spent millions of dollars trying to fix the 2,000-foot-long pool, which sits between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, but Trump said his renovation would be both cheaper and better. It was cheaper, but the latter has yet to be proven true.
“There’ll be no leaks. There’ll be no anything. It’ll look gorgeous, beautiful,” Trump said in April about the project, which he claimed would cost somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million. “It will look far more beautiful, more beautiful than it did in 1922 when they built it.”
However, the renovations, completed by a company that has worked on Trump’s golf courses, wrapped up earlier this month and ended up costing more than $14 million. Onlookers initially seemed unimpressed by the costly renovation after it was completed, saying the pool didn’t look much different from the way it did weeks earlier, NPR reported.
The algae almost immediately popped back up and has since worsened, making the pool reminiscent of the Chicago River when it’s dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day each year.
A Department of the Interior spokesperson previously told CNN the algae outbreak in the Reflecting Pool is from “residual algae from the supply lines, which have been sitting dormant for eight weeks.”
On Wednesday, an Interior Department spokesperson told JS that the National Park Service is using “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to kill algae, pathogens and contaminants “that have long plagued the Reflecting Pool since 1922.” They are also using hydrogen peroxide to help fix the issue.
“There are no harmful side effects to marine life or to the environment,” the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson did not say when the algae would be gone.
Take a look at the green, algae-infested Reflecting Pool below.
Emily Alff via Emily Alff/Sipa USA via Reuters
