US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that “horrific vandals” had sabotaged his project to renovate Washington’s Reflecting Pool, which will have to be renovated again after it was scorched with algae and peeling paint.
Trump has advocated a renovation for the 610-foot-long pool, bringing in contractors to drain it and paint it “American flag blue.”
But not long after the job was done, the paint began to visibly peel, and the sparkling waters immediately filled with green pond sludge.
As workers struggled to pump out murky water and poured hydrogen peroxide into the pool, Trump took no responsibility for what many observers called shoddy workmanship.
“We met with contractors today, we will probably have to release and drain a lot of water in order to make the necessary repairs, but we will make them as soon as possible,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
It is unclear how much it could add to the $14 million cost reported by US media so far.
In the lengthy social media post, the 80-year-old Republican claimed the renovations had been “functioning perfectly” before the “disgraceful vandalism”, accusing unidentified vandals of taking “some form of knife or blade” into the pool to “put a 250m long scratch” into it and pouring “destructive chemicals”.
Trump offered no evidence for his latest claim on renovation problems plaguing the pool.
– Olympic or Vandal –
One person accused of vandalizing the reflecting pool is former Olympian David Hearn, who told The Washington Post he was on a 52-mile (84-kilometer) bike ride when he stopped at the Lincoln Memorial to see for himself the renovation of the Reflecting Pool.
After bending over to touch some of the chipped blue paint, the 67-year-old man was surrounded by two National Guard members and arrested by U.S. Park Police officers on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property, the Post reported.
“I didn’t destroy, break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was happening, I was being handcuffed,” Hearn told the paper.
He added, “I got over there and I was able to grab the bottom of that flapping part, the part that was already peeling off. It was still attached to the bottom. I didn’t take anything off.”
The National Park Service did not respond to an AFP query seeking comment and confirmation.
An AFP photographer on Friday saw chunks of blue paint being pumped out of the pool by workers, along with green algae that has bloomed since it was recently refilled, turning the water a swampy color.
In one place, someone had traced the word “TRUMP” in green slime at the bottom of the pool, where the blue paint is chipped.
However, Trump tweeted on Friday that 75 percent of the algae was “gone and the situation will soon be fully corrected” adding that “fortunately, it’s just a small area of damage and it will be fixed early next week.”
– In bloom –
The Atlantic magazine sent algae from the Reflecting Pool for scientific testing and learned from experts that workers who had poured hydrogen peroxide into the pool to remove it from the algae had only inspired a different species to bloom.
“It’s a pretty aggressive breeder,” Hans Paerl, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the magazine.
Instead of the former blue-green algae, the new green algae is “just taking over,” Paerl said.
Trump, who began his professional career in his father’s real estate development business, has eagerly undertaken several renovations during his second term, including demolishing the East Wing of the White House for a ballroom.
This Reflecting Pool is hallowed real estate in Washington: it was from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 before several hundred thousand people gathered around the pool.
The renovation is in preparation for the 250th anniversary celebrations of independence from the United States this summer, on July 4.
