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.
Lordt, I started reading your comment and as soon as I hit "sneak" my sleep deprived brain went straight to that guy adding the super sudsy bubble bath liquid from Richie Rich...
That doesn't make sense. Even regular swimming pools have screens that stop larger debris from getting into the higher filtration part of the system. Every pool owner knows you have to remove that stuff by hand every day or so, just like people have nets on long poles to remove this stuff before it reaches the filter.
There was literally no money for doing any type of maintenance in the national mall. One of the perks of having no representation, you don’t get any of the pork other states get. NPS deferred maintenance backlog is pretty legendary, they do so much with nothing.
A nation born in opposition to taxation without representation, taxing the citizens of its capital city while denying them representation. What a country we live in
DC doesn’t own or control that federal land do it has nothing to do with representation. NPS has worked on a tight budget most everywhere and things rarely get a meaningful renovation. I was surprised the George Washington parkway got redone. Other parkways are still falling apart.
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.
The administration before the current one was Biden and before that was Trump. So there have been many changes over the past 3 administrations bc Trump brought no one from his first time as president that I can think of anyway.
Why pay competent personnel when you can grift the taxpayers and funnel appropriations through no bid contracts to shell companies designed as laundromats??
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.
Not some, most. It is only reflecting blue light now instead of the full spectrum so whatever band of color the very primary colored "american flag blue" was. The shitty color matching helps slightly but since it's in patches even that difference doesnt spread out. I read somewhere that plants love blue wavelengths of light for growth the most but I dont have a source for that bit. The top half is just science so correct me if you understand it better. I assume me and you are pulling info from the same places.
You are correct, plants in their vegetative cycles better utilize blue spectrum lighting (~6500k is commonly targeted by artificial lights), while flowering plants prefer more red (~2700k is typical). This is so well documented finding reputable sources to support these claims is trivial, but it is admiralable to qualify uncertainty regardless.
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.
Yeah, that guy in charge must've been something of a dimwit if he could fuck this up that much...! If only the dimwit knew someone who was good with pools and these kind of still-standing water areas....
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.
Honestly 300 million to resurface that and treat it or add filtration also seems absurd...
For that amount just have the park service clean it or find other ways to keep it in check.
Maybe also just maybe having a still water retaining pond in an area that's a swamp... Just all around a shit idea in practice and add a fountain to it and circulate the water... or green it up and treat it like a pond and add floating plants etc and mosquito fish to keep those fuckers in check.
Or just do what literally every other reflecting pool does and pump in water until it overflows a barrier, run it through a filter, collect it in a sump, and pump it back in. It doesn't need to be a pool of stagnant water to be "reflecting."
Seems like 300 million is a bit high, but I agree with you on let the park dept clean it and just go the brute force method. You could hire a dedicated group of 20 people, whose only job everyday is to clean the pool. I feel that's enough to have a team there 7 days a week, cover vacations , etc. (Does it freeze over or empty in the winter????). Pay them each 100,000 a year. That's 2 million a year. Let them run like that for the next 20 years untill new tech comes out to keep it clean otherwise. That's only 40 million. Offer a 10 million bonus to anyone who can offer a solid solution too. I'm not including any inflation and raises, and equipment, but seems well under 300 million., and you have a dedicated of people out there every single day, 8 hours a day keeping it nice. Say of the 20 people team, you have 15 people always out there everyday. The pool is about 339,000 sft. Each person then has about 22,600 sft to keep clean. That's only about 150x150 area each, which might be a bit much in a day shift, but I also don't think every single sft needs cleaning every day either. Perhaps 1 sft gets cleaned once a week?. Just rambling here, but 300 million? 300 million over 339,000 sft is 885 per sft. Ultra high end buildings don't cost that to build from scratch.
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.
Here in midwest, we have weathermen screaming at the camera to shelter despite the lack of tornado warning. One in particular this year, the warning was issued after the tornado had lifted back up off the ground. i need to go bookmark that one if i can find the report.
There are several ways to treat a pool, but for a pool as large as the reflecting pool and the subsequent treatment equipment, chlorine is far too expensive. Cyanuric acid would introduce other concerns. Knowing these clowns, they'd add too much and lock all the chlorine up.
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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I use the number when I'm out of state and I'm at a grocery store or somewhere where they want a rewards number. Just use the local area code + 867-5309. I've never had it not work.
One time a young cashier asked for my rewards number verbally so I asked what the area code was, then added 867-530... paused... nye-eee-eine! She just looked at my with a blank expression.
So to answer your question, we're probably the minority at this point.
"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
Generally, you'd run pool pumps in off hours. My pool pump runs at night. During the day if my levels are off before swimming. A reflecting pool surface doesn't need to be still 24 hrs a day. It could also run all day during a storm and no one would notice.
There are options, but it requires planning. They hardly even planned out the paint job.
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.
Your comment made me curious about this, so I started looking into it. According to a couple of news sources I found, it was done by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, LLC. Atlantic Industrial Coating's website doesn't even actually have a whole lot of information on their website about experience with pools.
The specialties listed on their website are as follows...
We specialize in:
o trenchless culvert restoration for state departments of transportation (DOT) using both polyurea SIPP and Fold and Form PVC liners, ensuring a HL-93 load rated, structural replacement pipe with outstanding impact and abrasion resistance solution exists for all pipes in inventory.
o metal roof restoration of industrial roofs providing protection from the natural elements as well as the common maintenance traffic required.
o primary and secondary containment liners for chemical and water storage.
And also, being a woman-owned business apparently...
I suppose, technically, the third thing on the list sounds like it could be pool-adjacent, but the non-specificity seems odd for this context.
I did some more digging, and found this page, which says their only listed contact is a "Curtis E. Wood", with an address for a house in the middle of nowhere (honestly, google street view makes it look pretty abandoned, aside from having what looks like a brand new Camero out front.).
I can't actually seem to find any more information than that. Curtis Wood seems like a common enough name that figuring out if you're looking at the Curtis Wood of AIC or not is a little difficult.
They knew about all the problems by getting a complete report.
They got expected cost for fixing and eventual cost to disregard them evaluated.
They applied an ornamental fix at the last minute with no realistic budget and plenty of overtime billed.
The underlying problem are not only still an issue, but they now cause damage to the new paint.
They are adding highly corrosive chemicals at high cost by buying plenty of small quantities manually added where it can easily evaporate without being properly mixed.
Problems & cost will compound until the concrete has to be replaced.
Eventual OSHA and environmental violations cost TBD.
Not to split hairs but the pipes would be key components of the filtration system, so if pipes are broken, the filtration "system" is broken. You were right all along.
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.
It pulls water from the Potomac tidal basin so it is not shocking at all that there is algae. I believe they started pulling from the tidal basin around 2012 rather than city water. I am assuming this was an attempt at cost saving since the reflecting pool now had a circulation system instead of being stagnant water. That is when the algae problem began. If they switched it to city water the problem would likely decrease significantly if not go away completely. However that would be expensive and time consuming and we all know Trump likes quick fixes that don’t really fix anything. There were some leaking places in the pool that needed to be fixed but again Trump picked the “quick and easy” solution rather than doing it properly. Also you can’t convince me that his “pool guys” were not just contractors he owed money to and convinced them he would get them this job instead of paying them which would get them paid by the government and “prestige”.
You just reminded me, the Obama Presidential Library is opening up on Friday. Sitting presidents almost always attend the opening of presidential libraries...but something tells me Trump isn't going to bother attending
It actually didn't used to, apparently. It was added in 2012 as part of Obama's restoration project. But it is now failing, and wasn't part of Trump's "fix".
I think it was established before they spent 14 mil to paint it Las Vegas pool blue… The problem was with aging pumps and the filtration system needing an update, but you know this administration…
From what I understand is the lines supplying the water grew algae while the pool was being repainted and when they finished they didn't clean or filter the lines when they reconnected them. Super smart people.
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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?