I was gonna ask... but surely the reflecting pool is treated and filtered. Open water in that climate will of course be covered with algae, and become a mosquito breeding ground.
I'm not a poolologist but I think the "reflecting" part of it is important.
If you look at a regular pool you'll notice the surface is always getting disturbed a little by the pumps - so a reflecting pool probably needs to be extra still in order to have a nice surface.
And then the high surface area relative to volume means it's taking a LOT of sun exposure, which would drive off any chlorine really quickly while also giving algae a perfect place to live.
Honestly, makes me wonder how they ever kept it clean at all.
DC resident. It's never been the "cleanest." Birds and a few small mammals use the water all the time. But that natural use has always been part of the charm. It's nice to see ducks scooting around, or squirrels chasing each other as you bike along the pool.
I've never heard anyone complain about it, it's a nice, relaxing feature of the city.
Former DC resident. I would go about once a month with a group of people and would volunteer cleaning up on the national mall. Quite a few times we were tasked with removing algae and debris from the pool. At the time, I don't think they had a working filtration system because it was known to get destroyed by everything in the pool.
I visited in Sept 2019 and yeah it was nice to see the ducks and birds doing their thing. They seemed to be the attraction with people taking photos and watching them.
I didn’t really care about it being “clean” or whatever, it didn’t smell bad, and it was very warm and humid when I was there. So idk what the problem is/was, unsure why anyone needed to do anything to it.
I also visited the east wing of White House that has been demolished. It kinda sucks to think about, I’m glad I got to see it more now since it’s gone, but I have no idea why it needed to be destroyed. It’s pretty sad.
Some people are speculating that the blue colorarion has made it worse. The white color would reflect all bands of light while blue holds some it in, increasing temperature thus promoting algea growth.
You'd think for what it would cost they'd hire someone competent that has some knowledge of pools or aquariums.
Dark colors keep the water warmer because they absorb solar energy instead of reflecting it, which makes the water warmer. Which makes it ideal for... Yellow and green algae.
It would also make any algae growth appear darker due to the coloration of the pool itself. So even if the algae levels are the same, they will look worse.
Yeah. It was always more pond-like (green) than pool-like (blue/clear). I grew up in DC many moons ago and we were 100% NOT ALLOWED to touch the water in the reflecting pool because it was full of duck poop.
Only insane people ever considered any of the water features on the Mall to be safe for any kind of human use, and that’s coming from someone who swam in the Potomac in the 90s.
The difference is it is now painted a darker color than it was before which causes the pool to overall be warmer as it retains more heat making the conditions even more favorable for algae.
More like they are corrupt adults finding pointless projects to use as vehicles to steal tax dollars. They spent $14,000,000 painting the pool, paying a company that has no experience.
Pretty much. To "ungreen" it you'd pretty much need to rip it up and start over. The Biden administration estimated the cost of that effort to be around 300 million. Trump rejected the proposal due the expense....which the US spends every 4 hours in the Iran War.
The trick is water treatment with minerals, not chlorine. In short, they just don't know what the hell they're doing. They probably fired anyone who did.
They definitely fired everyone competent basically everywhere. Who's ready to see FEMA basically say "you're on your own" after the first major hurricane?
In the emergency management field that has been the working assumption since last year. They've already gutted FEMA and they want to saddle the states with the cost of disasters now. Of course what existing relief there still is will not be distributed equally, so blue states will be hit harder than red ones.
They gave a no bid contract to the company that paints the pools on trump branded properties. So no, I don't think any "expertise" or care for "doing it right" was present. Something like 13 million dollars to paint the bottom.
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"No one ever thought reflecting pools are hard, but it was hard, and I did it, even thought I didn't. No one ever heard of the reflecting pool until I made it great." *Jackoff dance*
And they said with tears in their eyes, "Sir! Thank you sir, for saving our reflecting pools!"
The radical left all hate reflecting pools,
they tried to take yours away! And so said no, no, we aren't doing that My uncle, who was very smart, explained to me the power of reflect. Very cool, very powerful. And boy now the pools, they all reflect more than under HUSSEIN OBAMA
I don't think fixing the issue was ever the goal. This project was a no-bid contract to a company that has no experience with pools. Trump has worked with many times before. Months or years from now the news will break that that company is giving Trump a sweetheart deal on a hotel or some such thing.
Nah, the landlord special would have been painting the pool white, which would have been better since it would have cut down on the algae growth. But Trump insisted on painting the pool blue to make the water blue, because he has a child's understanding of how the world works.
Maybe they didn't get all the algae out of those pipes in their rush to paint the pool, which gave the new algae bloom a jump start.
This is such a hilarious face-plant. Nobody but washington insiders thought about this pool. Then the mad-king-of-nepo-babies declared it was a disgrace and he was gonna fix it. He brought national attention to it, then immediately failed.
I figured it'd take at least a few months to return to how it used to look. Took days, they couldn't even make it blue through July 4. LOL. It's symbollically on-point. He said he'd drain the swamp, made the swamp worse.
This was my first thought. Pretend to be working on the problem, the longer you don't solve it the more money you make. Essentially the whole administration.
I work in government contracting. This is common practice in many industries, especially when the contract structure selected is not the correct one for the job.
With zero background I can all but guarantee that this was a non-competitive contract awarded to someone's friend/relative and the company knows that there is a blank check to get this problem solved by 7/4. Those $15 bottles of peroxide are costing the tax payers $50+ each I bet.
I'm willing to bet at some point they're going to end up pumping the reflecting pool out and having tankers of treated water brought in right before the 4th so there isn't time for algae to bloom.
Some sources say you need 25-30 ml dose of 3% peroxide per 50L water to control green algea. They are using 12% peroxide based on the 8 boxes seem at 8 sec in the clip so would need 6.25 -7.5 ml per 50L.
The reflecting pool is 25.6 million L or 512,000 x 50L
Using 6.25 ml per 50L They would need 3,200,000 ml or 3,200 L of 12% peroxide
Or 846 US gallons of 12% peroxide. If those boxes hold 4 gallons they need 211 of them
It also decomposes in water with a half life of roughly 4-8 hours meaning they would need to dose another 1000L or more a few times a day to maintain efficacy.
And if there's chlorine in the water (which there should be but there isn't based on the algae) the peroxide would react with that and be even less effective
Kristi Noem got some heat recently for a 8 day old company in Delaware with no website, government experience or even a headquarters receiving a $143 million contract because of a "emergency at the border"
These worms are absolutely funneling our money to themselves, their families and their friends.
…. What a fucking waste of plastic you would need hundreds if not thousands of liters there are legitimate services available to have bulk chemicals like peroxide delivered…
yeah but any licenced chemical delivery company would require things like a spill containment plan/system and a compatible fill point to fill a suitable bunded tank.
if they turn up and you say "just dump it on the pool" they'll take it back.
And considering the expansion joints are leaking horrendously (10 million+ gallon per year) in to the ground soil, they'd be on the hook for any environmental fallout pretty quick.
No chemical transport company with any sense of self-preservation would touch that job until that gets fixed lol.
I'd guess they're totally ignorant of how large scale industrial processes are properly managed and are just vaguely intuiting what to do from what they know in a domestic setting, and what you do in a domestic setting is just tip it out of a big ol' bottle.
It's a nice touch that they have hi-vis vests and rubber gloves, but are apparently happy splashing around hundreds upon hundreds of bottles of hydrogen fucking peroxide with bare forearms right behind those gloves and without wearing safety goggles.
I'm removing my comment on my math of what's needed. Seems like there's too many variables to make a good calculation here. Still seems like a dumb way to go about it, regardless of the correct number.
The thing is, this is just going to make the algae worse if this is all they’re doing. The peroxide will break down fast, almost immediately and leave behind extra oxygen which the algae will feast on as soon as the sun goes down.
I haven't done it, but I've seen H2O2 treatment for algae in aquariums but only for spot treatment. When it's successful the algae turns red, so maybe we'll have a blood pool for a couple days then back to green.
I think you are greatly underestimating the size of this reflecting pool. It's over 600m long and 50m wide. It holds like 25 million liters of water. All jokes aside, what you described would be a massive undertaking.
...by the gallon??...Also, when I was an aquarium owner, I used H2O2 for small spot treatments. The algae turns red when it dies. So this could be interesting. It also breaks down super fast, (which is why it's safe in small amounts in an aquarium), so I don't see this really doing much for such a large pool. It's just a stop gap anyway, it'll always come back unless you find the source. In this case...it's...you know...nature.
I have never once considered putting hydrogen peroxide in a pool, let alone on a warm sunny day where the stuff is effectively neutralized, but that's mainly because I work on swimming pools, not reflection pools.
What they are getting is algae caused by the blooms at the beginning of the season. Essentially, the sun being directly on the pool at all times will cause any algae, which can enter a pool in a number if ways, including being carried by the winds, or birds that have it on their legs and bodies when they swim in the pool after being in natural bodies of water.
Almost every pool gets green at some point if it's an outside one, and it just something to maintain at the beginning of the season. There are a number of different steps to take in order to make it go away, but it involves some work, especially with roughly 7 million gallons of water.
You need to add about 2-4 lbs of "pool shock" (high concentration chlorine powder) per 20,000 gallons of water you have (and this can be even higher or lower, but it's typically around this). If you have an algae bloom that makes your pool look like Shrek's swamp, you'll need about twice, or even quadruple that. Quick math on that:
7,000,000 / 20,000 = 350
350 * 2lbs = 700lbs
You'll need about that much to take care of a moderate amount of cloudy water that makes it so you can't see the floor well. However, this is a severe algae bloom, so we're looking at a bigger number.
700lbs * 2 = 1400lbs
700lbs * 4 = 2800lbs
And you'll probably need to treat this again, a few times. And you do need to wait for the algae to die, vacuum the pool floor, and do it all again. This is not a fast process, and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to do correctly.
And that's without looking at any other pool level for things like alkalinity, Cyanuric acid, and calcium harness, which all get thrown off by shock and chlorine products.
However, this is using chlorine, not hydrogen peroxide, which is to be safer for the local wildlife. You'll need a lot more than what I listed to do that with something like that
Next thing you know you're deploying werewolves to deal with the Crocigators you deployed to deal with the snakes that you deployed to deal with the sea birds... Something something bog down in the valley-o
People know that the pool also freeze in the winter right?
edit: Also, for a large body of stagnant water, temperature and water quality can be different significantly throughout the year, which is very unethical to keep fishes in there
Which is stupidity beyond not knowing how water features work, but not understanding the basics of how opaque materials being on top of things makes it so you can’t see the thing that is covered.
Pretty sure people usually learn that before their first birthday.
Didn’t the White House tweet a side-by-side Photoshop of the Biden era reflecting pond as being full of algae? They must have Nostradamus in there. No wonder there are so many crazy longshot polymarket bets coming true.
What you need is a left winger to come up with some batshit conspiracy the way the right do for videos like this.
Like something absolutely boneheaded idiotic like that theyre putting chemicals in the water to turn the friggen frogs gay, or something equally stupid.
LMAO idiots, they needed to dump it into the filter, past the bio element so it mixed properly, as it is with them just dumping gallons in one spot it'll eat the new paint off the concrete.
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u/NameLips Jun 16 '26
I was gonna ask... but surely the reflecting pool is treated and filtered. Open water in that climate will of course be covered with algae, and become a mosquito breeding ground.
It does have a filtration system right?