The renovation of the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, cost much more than expected and began to raise doubts just days after completion. Donald Trump says there was vandalism, but has not yet presented evidence
The blue was short-lived. A few days after the reflecting pool next to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington was painted and filled again, the work commissioned by Donald Trump began to raise doubts.
First algae appeared. Then, areas of the blue coating applied to the bottom of the structure began to come off. On Friday night, the American president presented his explanation. “We have had real problems with vandalism at the beautiful reflecting pool,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, his social network.
The President assured that authorities are investigating, but did not present public evidence that the damage was caused intentionally.
“The algae have already disappeared by 75% and the situation will soon be completely resolved,” he added. According to Trump, the area allegedly vandalized is “small” and should be repaired early next week.
The intervention had been presented by the US administration as a necessary improvement in one of the best-known places in the capital of the United States. The reflecting pool is located between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, on the National Mall, the large monumental area where memorials, museums and public buildings are concentrated.
But the work quickly became a political issue. Trump had criticized the state of the structure and advocated a quick renovation. The initial estimate was around 1.8 million dollars, approximately 1.6 million euros. The contract for the intervention later rose to around 14.7 million dollars, approximately 12.8 million euros, according to a contract summary from the US Department of the Interior. The project was assigned to the company Atlantic Industrial Coatings.
The financial dimension was joined by the image: a symbolic space, recently renovated, with algae in the water and material being lifted from the bottom. Trump associated the case with another episode that occurred days earlier on the same monumental axis.
The inscription “8647” was found in the grass near the water mirror. In informal North American language, “86” can mean eliminate, remove or remove someone or something. Trump is the 47th president of the United States. The sequence was therefore interpreted as a political message against the President.
The Department of the Interior called the inscription “crazy vandalism.” Trump went further and suggested a link between the two episodes. “Just as three days ago they destroyed the grass outside the reflecting pool, they also did everything they could to damage the inside surface that had just been installed,” he wrote.
According to the President, whoever damaged the grass used chemicals and “something similar” could have been used inside the structure “to destroy and humiliate our beautiful work”.
So far, however, no public evidence of this link has been presented.
Part of the problem may have a simpler explanation. In a shallow water surface, exposed to the sun and with little circulation, algae can appear quickly, especially on hot days. Treatments used by maintenance crews may clear the water for a time, but the problem may return if conditions persist.
The administration says that methods were used to combat algae, including products less aggressive than chlorine.
The blue coating coming off raises another question. There can be several causes for this: the way the bottom was prepared, the humidity, the time the material had to dry or the reaction to the products used later in the water. For now, the fact that the coating is lifting does not prove vandalism. But it also does not allow us to conclude, without a technical assessment, that there was an error in the work.
The water mirror is around 618 meters long and more than 50 meters wide. It is one of the most recognizable images of Washington, reflecting the Washington Monument from the Lincoln Memorial. It is also a place associated with great moments in American civic life, including historic demonstrations and speeches on the memorial steps.
And the size of the structure had already been used by Trump to promote intervention. At the beginning of the month, the president compared the length of the reflecting pool with the height of New York skyscrapers, such as the Empire State Building and One World Trade Center.
The comparison was criticized for lumping together different measurements: the horizontal length of a water structure and the vertical height of buildings.
Trump also spoke in a dimension higher than the real one. He mentioned about 2,500 feet, but the commonly given measurement is just over 2,000 feet, about 618 meters.
Trump presented the renovation as part of his campaign to improve Washington’s image and again blamed Democrats for the state in which he found the space. In Friday’s post, he wrote that his administration was fixing a problem that “should have been resolved many years ago.”
For critics, however, the intervention became the opposite of what Trump wanted to show: an expensive project, carried out urgently, in a symbolic space, and with visible problems immediately after completion.
The President promises that the situation will be resolved in the coming days. The investigation into the alleged vandalism is ongoing. But for now, the political image of the work is different: a million-dollar renovation that was supposed to clean up Washington’s reflection and ended up resulting in controversy. public evidence was presented that the damage to the water surface was caused intentionally.
The work that was supposed to show a better cared for Washington ended up opening another controversy: millions spent, algae in the water, cladding coming loose and an accusation of vandalism yet to be demonstrated.
