A company that worked on previous renovations at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool turned down a request to supply its products for the makeover demanded by Donald Trump because it deemed the project “unfeasible.”
New Jersey-based Sika USA, which provided concrete construction and sealing products for the 2012 renovations commissioned by the Obama administration, was approached in March by the Trump administration about its plans to resurface the pool and repaint it “American Flag Blue.”
The company declined the offer because it believed completing the project by July 4 was not possible. It also warned that painting the pool’s bottom blue would create additional problems, two Sika employees told CNN.
Instead, the contract went to Rhino Linings, a company primarily known for truck bed liners. Since then, Trump’s pool renovation project has been plagued by green algae and blue paint chips breaking off the bottom and floating to the surface.
The revelation that another firm was approached to help with the botched renovation has raised concerns that the $14 million project was rushed to coincide with the America 250 celebrations.
“Donald Trump’s disastrous renovation of our national Reflecting Pool is his latest failed vanity project,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
“The President should be focused on making life more affordable for the American people, not rewarding his loyalists with government contracts and wasting taxpayer money on failing projects. We’re demanding answers straight from the contractors about the project’s failures.”
The 80-year-old president has frequently referenced failed attempts to restore the Reflecting Pool under Barack Obama, while promoting his own project.
However, the plan to refill the pool and paint it blue has run into even more severe algae problems than those faced by previous administrations.
Trump and his MAGA allies have desperately insisted that the algae and chipping paint are the work of “vandals.”
Trump has also pushed the unsubstantiated claim that someone used a knife to carve a “250-foot-long gash” into the pool, without offering any evidence.
According to CNN, Sika declined to work on Trump’s renovation following a routine feasibility and risk assessment. The company concluded that the project was too complex to be completed within the few months demanded by the Trump administration.
Another major issue involved the pool’s expansion joints, which allow the massive concrete slabs to expand and contract with changing temperatures. Restrictions on what materials could be submerged in water across the pool’s 2.5 miles of expansion joints made the project particularly difficult.
Sika proposed covering the joints with metal before applying the blue coating. However, the company warned that as the joints naturally expanded and contracted, the metal could become visible, creating inconsistencies in the pool’s blue finish.
Another issue that has plagued Trump’s project is the type of coating that was ultimately used. One product applied by Rhino Linings—the Pipeliner 5000—is typically used for water storage and wastewater facilities, which are not regularly exposed to direct sunlight like the shallow Reflecting Pool.
A second product, Rhino 406 Primer, is commonly used on garage floors and is not well suited to flexible expansion joints like those in the Reflecting Pool, one Sika employee told CNN.
