President Donald Trump’s freshly relined Reflecting Pool won’t be patched up in time for his America 250 celebrations, the company that supplied the peeling coating has admitted.
The president, 80, made the algae-stained pool on the National Mall one of his pet projects, boasting in April that he could clean it up within a week for roughly $1 million.
Three months and more than $14 million later, the basin is covered in algae, turning it a sickly green, ducks have been found dead on the surface, and its much-hyped “American flag blue” liner is flaking off into the water.
Now the contractor says the cosmetic fixes will have to wait. “It will not be before the celebrations, that’s for sure,” Francois Rivard, vice president of California firm Rhino Linings, told Politico in an interview. “It would be up to [the National Park Service] to tell you exactly when they plan… but it’s in a matter of weeks, not years.”
When approached for comment, a White House spokesperson told the Daily Beast: “Include Karoline’s comments on Hannity last night.”
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the Virginia firm that was awarded the $14.7 million contract, brought in Rhino Linings to apply the liner last month.
An algae bloom then spread across the 340,000-square-foot surface, and once park managers started vacuuming, scraping, and dosing the water with hydrogen peroxide, the liner itself began to come away.
Rivard insists the pool is still watertight, saying the stripping is limited to the outer blue layer applied purely for looks. The bigger repairs will likely happen straight after the July 4 festivities, he said, once tests reveal what caused the coating to peel.
Trump claimed in the Oval Office on Monday that the damage was caused by vandals. He said a 350-foot slit must have been cut into the liner with a knife or box cutter, and suggested someone may have dumped fertilizer in the water to trigger the algae.
Asked for evidence, the president said only, “You’ll see it in court.”
The Department of the Interior said on Monday that five people were arrested in connection with reports of vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
“Five individuals have been arrested for vandalism. Five additional individuals were issued federal citations,” a department spokesperson told The Hill. They said 14 police reports had been filed regarding vandalism of the Reflecting Pool.
Three-time U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn, 67, was detained for around five hours after stopping during a 52-mile bike ride to touch the flapping liner. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn has said. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything.”
An Interior Department spokesperson told Politico Playbook that no events around the Reflecting Pool have been canceled.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, the Interior Department, and Rhino Linings for comment.
