How Trump’s reconstructed Reflecting Pool created a ‘perfect’ storm for algae

Swamp. Vomit. Mountain Dew. These are just a few of the comparisons Washingtonians and tourists have drawn to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which filled with algae last week after President Donald Trump’s multimillion-dollar renovation project went awry.

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“It smells worse than it looks. That’s just… it’s not what Trump promised,” said Joe Cribbs, a pedestrian walking near the Reflecting Pool. 

Algae blooms in the Reflecting Pool are not new — the water feature has been turning similar shades of green since its opening in the early 1920s — but experts say the administration’s renovation likely worsened the problem. 

Dr. Peter May, an algae expert and ecologist at the University of Maryland, specifically pointed to three mistakes made by the administration during the overhaul: the color, the water and the season. 

Trump inherited a Reflecting Pool last renovated by President Barack Obama in 2012, during which a light concrete material was used to line the base of the fountain. This allowed the fountain to reflect light and heat away from the water, May said. But once Trump directed the National Park Service to paint the pool a dark “American flag blue” — the highlight of his Washington makeover to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary — the temperature of the water rose. 

“It absorbs more light, more heat, and extra heat is a benefit for algae growth,” May said, adding that this algal bloom will likely not be the last one we see this summer. 

That is due in part to the water the park service filled the pool with, the same that comes from any sink in the city. May said the city’s tap water is high in both phosphorus and nitrogen, nutrients that are perfectly safe for people to drink, but also fuel algae growth. Add to that the summer heat — the renovation is set to be finished for America’s semiquincentennial on the Fourth of July — and the monument has quickly become an ideal incubator for the fast-growing flora. 

May said those elements, along with the pool’s shallow depth, makes it “a perfect system for creating an algae bloom,” but that does not mean it needs to stay that way. He said that a natural solution, like the installation of a subsurface wetland near the pool, could filter out the algae-boosting nutrients from the city’s tap water with ease, and for a fraction of what the administration has spent on the renovation so far. 

Dr. Rosalina Stancheva Christova, a professor of aquatic ecology at George Mason University, echoed May’s sentiments in an interview with NPR, citing “shallow, stagnant water, strong sunlight and no shade” for the algae growth.

“It could happen every single summer,” Christova said. “But it seems that the disturbance of the pond during the renovations [is] accelerating this process.”

Lime green plant life is not the only new addition to the Reflecting Pool. This week, rows of tall security cameras were erected along the north and south walks of the water feature, increasing the surveillance around the pool ahead of America 250.