Donald Trump’s latest beautification plan for Washington DC – the restoration of the 2,000ft-long reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial – has met been with claims that a $6.9m contract to carry out the project was hastily handed out to a company that renovated a swimming pool at the president’s Virginia golf course.
The New York Times reported that the no-bid contract for the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was given to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, based in New Canton, Virginia, on 3 April – despite company records’ showing it has not previously been awarded a federal contract.
One of the company’s owners, Curtis Wood, declined to comment on the contract to the Times.
Maintaining clarity in the pool for it to reflect has been a problem since it was constructed in 1922. It is between 18in and 30in deep, holds about 6.75m gallons of water and has no natural flow. In Washington’s hot, humid summer, the pool turns green with algae.
Barack Obama’s presidential administration spent more than $35m attempting to fix the algae issue, but the problem persisted. Joe Biden’s administration elected to simply drain and refill it each year. In addition to the algae issue, the pool annually leaks 16m gallons of water, which the National Park Service (NPS) – and ultimately taxpayers – are obliged to replace.
There are signs that the clarity of the pool has become a fixation for Trump, alongside other projects on which the president is keen, including the construction of a vast White House ballroom and a “freedom arch” to rival or exceed the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations in the summer.
“You’re going to end up with a beautiful, beautiful reflecting pool, the way it’s supposed to be,” Trump said in April. “Much better than it ever was, actually.”
Trump also hinted that he knew a man who could help. “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools,” Trump said. “He looked at it. He called me up. He said, ‘Sir, we can do something on it.’”
Trump said he suggested making the pool turquoise “like in the Bahamas” but had settled on the contractor’s suggestion of “American-flag blue”.
The president recently posted an AI-generated image of himself in a gold inflatable pool chair and his vice-president, JD Vance; his secretary of state, Marco Rubio; his interior secretary, Doug Burgum; and an unidentified woman in a checkered bikini relaxing in a clear-blue version of the reflecting pool.
Trump earlier in the spring said he decided to paint the reflecting pool blue. The Times found that the administration had used a federal contract exemption designed for use to avoid “serious injury, financial or other, to the government” to award the contract without seeking competing bids.
“This project is now being completed at ‘Trump speed’ to ensure the iconic landmark is totally restored ahead of the 250th [US anniversary] celebrations,” a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said in a statement to the Times.
Beside riding roughshod over planning regulations by paving over the Rose Garden and tearing down the East Wing to make way for his ballroom, and erecting a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds, Trump has attracted criticism for his pool project.
Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, told the Times that the renovations and changes had “become a secretive project where the friends and business associates of the president are being rewarded with no public scrutiny”.
However, it is not certain that painting the pool blue will fix its major issue: a filtration system that’s not up to the job. The pool may turn green with or without a blue bottom.
“Painting is not going to solve that problem,” Aquatic Council chairperson Tim Auerhahn told the Times. Auerhahn also said that Trump’s decision to visit the pool by motorcade recently may have exacerbated the leaks.
“If it were my project, I’d require an immediate inspection,” Auerhahn added.
