CNN Reveals How Badly Trump Botched His Vanity Project
The president’s multimillion-dollar renovation at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been plagued by outbreaks of algae.
The algae-infested water in the refilled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is even more disgusting than its green color suggests.
During an episode of The Issue Is, CNN’s Washington correspondent Sunlen Serfaty took a sample from the pool that President Donald Trump ordered be repainted and refilled as part of the America250 celebrations and sent it off for testing.
During the segment, Serfaty dunked a clear plastic bottle into the pool to collect the sample, revealing its off-putting greenish hue.
The results showed that the pool’s “phosphate levels are far higher than what is recommended to keep algae at bay, based on estimates for a pool that holds 6.5 million gallons of water.”
The shallow pool’s stagnant water mixed with sunlight is an ideal breeding ground for algae.
Eric Lee/Eric Lee/Reuters
Phosphates are a primary nutrient for algae, and elevated levels can rapidly fuel algal blooms.
“If there’s already some phosphate fertilizer in the water, that’s really opportunistic, especially for the blue-green algae that can fix nitrogen, so they are having a field day out here,” Barrett Brooks, an algae specialist in the Botany Department at the Museum of Natural History, told CNN.
The 80-year-old president has been left embarrassed after his plan to refill the pool and repaint it a shade of “American Flag Blue” ran into the same algae problems that previous administrations have faced.
The Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial turned a bright shade of green as crews struggled to remove algae after it was renovated.
Sarah Ewall-Wice
Trump originally claimed the renovation would cost around $1.8 million, but the price tag has ballooned to more than $14 million.
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Earlier this week, crews were seen pouring liters of hydrogen peroxide into the more than 2,000-foot-long pool in a desperate effort to treat the algae.
A U.S. National Park Service worker dumps bottles of hydrogen peroxide in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as part of their effort to mitigate an algae bloom.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The Department of the Interior insists that hydrogen peroxide is a “milder treatment” than chlorine, which is commonly used to clean pools, and says its use will not harm wildlife or the environment.
The department has also said that a water-treatment system known as the “nanobubbler” is working to break down the algae before it is vacuumed away.
“The nanobubbler technology has successfully destroyed the algae bloom that has plagued every pool reopening since 1922—most infamously the Obama-era pool reopening, which resulted in massive algae clumps taking over the pool’s surface following years of construction that cost taxpayers millions upon millions, only for the pool to become broken and disgusting days later,” a spokesperson said.
Trump had routinely blasted the pool’s water as "disgusting" during previous administrations’ efforts to refill it.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Elsewhere, a resident of Alexandria, Virginia, told the Daily Beast that the state of the reflecting pool is “a mess” and that they have “never seen it this green before.”
“I think it’s a waste of our tax dollars,” James, who declined to give his surname and has lived in the D.C. area for decades, added. “It’s ridiculous.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of the Interior for comment.
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