Hold on. Trump isn’t the only one to blame for the $16M Reflecting Pool fiasco | Opinion
Green algae .... peeling paint .... and now dead ducks?
What more could go wrong with President Donald Trump’s latest pet project — restoring the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool?
The Washington Post reports that a duck carcass was discovered floating in the pool’s murky water over the weekend. Two more dead ducks were found in a nearby pond. Experts fear they may have come into contact with toxins from the algae or chemicals from the bright blue paint used to coat the surface of the Reflecting Pool.
It’s all sounding less like a $16 million renovation of a beloved landmark — courtesy of American taxpayers — and more like an opening scene from a lousy horror film that goes straight to streaming.
And as satisfying as it may be to lay it at the feet of Donald Trump, this is not — dare I say it? — all his fault.
The Reflecting Pool is a problem he inherited — one that’s been passed down from administration to administration.
Built on swamp land ‘with the consistency of a wet sponge’
The pool was built in the 1920s on drained marshland — described by then-House Speaker Joseph Cannon as a “damned swamp.”
“The bottom was laid in asphalt and tile directly on the soft, dredged riverbed. No underlying support structure, No pilings. Nearly seven million gallons of water sitting on something with consistency of wet sponge,” according to the history blog, Ghosts of DC.
As a result, the pool sank more than a foot over the coming decades and was plagued with leaks.
There were attempted fixes; in the 1980s, concrete was poured onto the bottom pool, but it continued to leak massive amounts of water.
A major, $34 million restoration project began in 2010, during the Obama administration. The original structure was removed and 2,100 timber pilings were driven into the ground to support the new pool.
That wasn’t a perfect solution, either.
“Although no longer at risk of sinking, the repairs weren’t perfect. Algae bloomed in the reflecting pool just weeks after it was refilled with water....” Jordan Smith wrote for the History website.
Trump has blamed the Obama administration for installing a circulation and filtration system that failed to keep the water clean.
He’s right, but if we have to blame someone for the ick, maybe we should go back even further, to the folks who built the pool in the first place.
What really happened: vandalism or ineptitude?
President Trump has said the pool will have to be drained (again) for repairs, at who knows what additional cost to taxpayers.
Here’s a thought: Before throwing more money at the problem, maybe consult with several qualified consultants, rather than hastily awarding no-bid contracts in order to get the pool spiffed up in time for the Fourth of July.
Experts contacted by Scientific American say a full analysis will be needed to determine what went wrong, though they speculated on possible causes.
The coating may not have been property applied, they said, or damaged by heavy equipment at the bottom of the pool.
“There’s probably a lot of water chemistry involved in this situation.,” said David McFayden, CEO of a paint and coating inspection company. “I can’t say that we’ve ever been involved in anything exactly like this before, to be honest with you.”
Trump, meanwhile, insists the damage was caused by vandals who dumped chemicals into the pool and slit the coating with a knife or a box cutter. Several arrests have been made, though no evidence has been presented.
If this truly was a case of vandalism, that points to a troubling lack of security, which explains why new surveillance cameras were recently installed around the pool.
They’re presumably there to spot elusive vandals lurking around the pool with knives, box cutters and buckets of caustic chemicals, or tourists trying to sneak off with strips of blue paint to resell on eBay.
Say, while they’re at it, maybe they can keep an eye out for fresh algae blooms and distressed ducks?
