The blue paint is peeling off the Reflecting Pool
Algae returned to the pool after its $14 million renovation. Now its newly applied surface is exfoliating.
For days, workers have been trying to rid the Reflecting Pool of algae after a more than $14 million renovation that President Donald Trump said was “done properly” and “could last for 100 years.”
But now workers have another problem to contend with: peeling paint. On Thursday, a sheet of the pool’s surface — painted in American Flag Blue, a color selected by the president — was seen floating on the north side of the pool. It undulated in the water as curious tourists gathered, some of whom had come to see the green algae.
At 5:35 p.m. on Thursday, a worker came to remove the sheet of pool surface, telling a Washington Post photographer not to photograph it, despite being on public land.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to questions about the paint and why the pool surface is separating. The agency said in a statement on Wednesday that it is treating the pool with hydrogen peroxide and “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to effectively cut off the algae’s food supply.
On Thursday, the Interior Department press office posted on X that “the Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool — just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
Indeed, some areas of the Reflecting Pool were looking cleaner compared with earlier in the week. Workers in chest-high waders stood in the middle of the pool and vacuumed the algae. The neon green-tinted water could be seen pouring out of tubes into nearby drainage grates. The center of the pool, though, was still neon green, and residual algae remained in the cleaned portions of the pool.
Within days of the renovation’s completion, the Reflecting Pool had more algae in it than at any recorded point in the month of June for at least five years, according to a specialized analysis of satellite data.
The Reflecting Pool renovation, Trump has said, was prompted by a friend visiting from Germany who called the water “filthy, dirty … disgusting looking.” Algae has been a consistent problem for the pool and quickly reappeared after a $34 million renovation that was completed in 2012.
But this time would be different, the president promised. He touted his pool-building experience and praised the workmanship of his contractor, who got the job in a no-bid contract.
“I’m very proud of it,” Trump said in the Oval Office on June 3, saying that his six-week project had finally solved the pool’s yearslong leaking issues. “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”
“This was not a paint job,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on June 5. “This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years, applied by very talented people.”
On Friday morning, the president reposted an artificial intelligence-generated video showing him filling the Reflecting Pool with what appeared to be critics’ tears (and blue-tinted water) on Truth Social.
The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a local advocacy organization, sued to stop Trump’s changes to the Reflecting Pool, but the work was completed before a judge could issue a ruling.
One of the reasons TCLF filed its lawsuit is because the National Park Service did not perform a review as per the National Historic Preservation Act, said Charles A. Birnbaum, the organization’s president and CEO.
Under that review, they would have been required to consult subject area experts who could “identify potential problems — like algae and exfoliating paint — and, perhaps, suggest solutions,” said Birnbaum in a statement to the Post. “Instead, the Park Service granted themselves a ‘streamlined review,’ which they admitted was done under pressure from ‘White House leadership’ even though the project was ineligible.”
He concluded: “We can see the result.”