WASHINGTON: One of President Donald Trump’s pet beauty projects for Washington was supposed to make the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool look blue, like part of the US flag. Enter Mother Nature. Algae have proliferated in the water, turning it a swampy green. “Can you see it in my photos? Oh well, I’ll just use a filter to hide the algae,” said Farrah Lu, a 43-year-old tourist from China.
The invasion comes just days after the completion of the pool repainting project, part of Trump’s drive to put his stamp on Washington with things like a ballroom at the White House and a huge arch by the Potomac River. Under Trump’s orders the long, rectangular pool, designed to capture reflections of the Washington Monument on the National Mall, was drained and painted in what he calls “American flag blue.”
This is hallowed Washington real estate: it was from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr gave his famed “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 to several hundred thousand people gathered below around the pool. Alas, hot weather this past weekend apparently caused an algae bloom in the pool. “When I thought reflecting pool, I would see some reflection of the monument on the pool. That’s what the name says, so that didn’t meet my expectation,” said Ravi Desai, visiting from Australia. “But overall I still find it very beautiful. And we’re just tourists here.”
The National Park Service said it is using pumps to treat the water with what it called nanobubble ozone technology to kill the algae, along with hydrogen peroxide, which it said is milder than chlorine.
The pool project has faced scrutiny over its multimillion dollar cost and the process by which the contract was awarded—a no-competition deal favoring a company that had already done work for Trump at one of his golf clubs. Nicole Leguillow, a 66-year-old resident of neighboring Virginia, said she was not disappointed by the pool, saying algae will be algae. But she complained the funds spent on this Trump endeavor were “definitely not worth it.” “That money could have been spent much more wisely on things people in this country need,” Leguillow said.
Ballroom cost
US President Donald Trump’s ballroom project at the White House will cost as much as $600 million, with more than half coming from taxpayers, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Trump had previously estimated the cost at $400 million and repeatedly insisted that private donors — including himself — would foot the bill for the new building, a centerpiece of his drive to put his stamp on the US capital.
The newspaper cited a copy of a detailed cost estimate prepared for the Trump administration by Clark Construction, the contractor hired to build the ballroom.
The project began last year when Trump, with little warning and without consulting Congress, tore down the entire historic East Wing of the White House. The White House insisted in a statement to AFP Tuesday that Trump and the donors were bearing most of the cost.
“President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400 million, which will be a secure and appropriate venue for Presidents for generations to come,” spokesman Davis Ingle said. – AFP
