The Trump administration’s renovations of the Reflecting Pool on DC’s National Mall held up for about a week.
Construction crews spent weeks painting the more-than-2,000-foot-long pool “American Flag Blue” at Donald Trump’s request, ahead of the country’s 250th birthday. Although the shallow Reflecting Pool has long been plagued by algae growth, a pool renovation expert told Washingtonian that the color of the paint could be exacerbating the problem.
On Wednesday, a day after the basin was refilled, workers were seen cleaning out clumps of algae—which have transformed the pool’s signature reflection to a mossy green. The algae resurfaced by Friday morning.
Katie Martin, an Interior Department spokesperson, told CNN the growth was a result of “residual algae” from the supply lines that had been dormant during construction.
“We are removing the algae, and the nanobubblers will maintain the pool and keep it algae free. President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who has fixed the Reflecting Pool for good unlike the failed and extremely costly attempt by Obama and Biden,” Martin said in a statement to CNN.
The algae growth follows renovations that Trump initially said would cost $1.5 to $2 million, but wound up totaling over $14 million, according to contract records. The administration awarded Atlantic Industrial Coatings a $14.2 million contract to paint the pool.
Steve Goodale, a Canadian swimming pool specialist who goes by “Swimming Pool Steve,” said the darker blue of the renovated pool may worsen the pool’s existing algae problem absent other mitigation efforts, because the darker color will absorb more sunlight and increase the water temperature, making the pool ripe for more algae blooms.
“If we change nothing else except the color, and we go from a lighter color to a darker color, absolutely you’re going to have more prolific algae growth,” Goodale said. “It’s a foregone conclusion.”
Goodale said a more “robust, capable” filtration system would help with the algae growth, and the pool simply needs more ozone to combat the increased plant growth. He said it is common for algae growth to occur when pools are newly renovated because refilling the pool creates shallow “stagnant water” where algae is ripe to grow. He said residual algae in the pipes is not likely the cause of the current growth.
“I don’t think that it’s residual or anything like that,” Goodale said. “There probably was contamination of pipes and things like that, but that algae was coming back whether those pipes were spotless clean or not.”
Trump, when announcing the renovations, had described the pool as “filthy.”
“It never worked, a great concept that never worked because it always leaked,” Trump said in the Oval Office announcing the reopening of the pool.
Algae has proved to be a recurring nuisance for the Reflecting Pool, last renovated in 2012 when President Barack Obama’s administration installed an ozone filtration system meant to combat algae growth. That $34 million renovation also resulted in subsequent algae growth, which caused the National Park Service to drain the pool.
