Blue-green, flaking and infested with algae: the setbacks of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington continue to undermine a project dear to Donald Trump, who blamed so-called “vandals” on Saturday.
The American president, who has communicated extensively on the renovation of this emblematic basin of the capital, has been more discreet in recent days, at a time when project management problems have multiplied.
The blue paint applied to the bottom of the pool – at great expense – is crumbling. As for its “flag blue” color, it encouraged the appearance of algae which quickly proliferated.
These hiccups have reignited criticism around this project, estimated at around US$14 million according to the American press, entrusted without a public call for tenders to a company that has already worked on one of the president’s golf clubs.
Far from taking responsibility for the situation, Donald Trump on Saturday incriminated so-called “saboteurs”.
“The National Park Police have arrested several individuals for vandalizing our nation’s beautiful reflecting pool,” he wrote Saturday evening on his Truth Social network, before repeating a few hours later that “many other people” had been arrested.
The National Park Service (NPS), which is responsible for managing the work, did not confirm these arrests to AFP nor the nature of the “sabotage” activities mentioned by the president.
In his long message, Donald Trump accuses these “vandals” of having used “a type of knife or blade” to cut the basin over “a length of 250 feet” (approximately 76 meters) and of having dumped “corrosive and destructive chemicals” there, without providing proof.
Algae
Among those arrested was David Hearn, a former Olympic athlete who represented the United States in canoeing in 1992, 1996 and 2000. He told the Washington Post that he was on a bike ride when he stopped at the Lincoln Memorial to observe the renovations.
“I reached out and was able to grab the end of that piece that was dangling, that piece that was already flaking off. It was still attached to the bottom. I didn’t take anything away,” he explained. The 67-year-old man claims to have then been surrounded by two National Guard soldiers then arrested by park police officers for damage to public property.
On Friday, an AFP photographer saw workers pumping away fragments of blue paint as well as green algae.
To try to restore crystal clear water to the basin, the NPS indicated that it had released hydrogen peroxide, while a nanobubble ozone system was deployed in recent days.
According to The Atlantic magazine, which analyzed samples from the basin, these treatments paradoxically favored the proliferation of another particularly aggressive species of green algae.
Despite the efforts of the National Park Service, the 610 m long basin must now be “emptied of a large part of its water in order to make the necessary repairs”, wrote Donald Trump.
A setback for the Republican president who still affirmed at the end of the week that “the problem would soon be resolved” and assured at the beginning of June that the materials used “could last a hundred years”.
