National Park Service workers at the Reflecting Pool on Monday. Credit... Alex Kent/The New York Times
THIS is what happens when you let greed and corruption guide your decision making. Typical result from a NOT MY pres drumpf/trump project. And now drumpf/trump and his ass licking sycophants are scrambling to deny involvement in the Reflecting Pool mess. drumpf/trump and this lot really are drippings. From the New York Times.....
Trump Ordered ‘American Flag Blue’ for the Reflecting Pool. It’s Green Again.
Reporting from Washington
President Trump wanted the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial to look pristine. Photosynthesis had other plans.
Days after the Trump administration completed a $14.2 million project to coat the Reflecting Pool’s concrete floor with dark blue waterproofing material, clumps of algae dotted the surface on Sunday and Monday, giving parts of the pool a green hue.
The pool was gleaming last week after the work, which was meant to fix two longstanding problems, leaks and algal blooms, before the country’s 250th birthday. But after several hot and humid days, the algae returned in force.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which manages the site, said the project involved the successful installation of a water-treatment system called a nanobubbler. She said the algae would be gone soon.
“Due to deploying the advanced nanobubbler technology, the algae is dead and being vacuumed up as we speak,” the spokeswoman, Katie Martin, said in an email. “We thank President Trump for fixing the Reflecting Pool for good.”
Last week, Ms. Martin had said the algae was “residual” and came from supply lines that sat dormant during the renovations.
President Trump said last month that the pool had been “filthy” and “dirty” for years. He said his changes would make the site “beautiful,” adding that the waterproofing material on its floor was a color called “American flag blue.”
To repair the pool, Mr. Trump’s administration awarded no-bid contracts to two handpicked vendors, bypassing a legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what officials declared an urgent need. (The administration said the urgency was justified because of the nation’s 250th birthday party.)
The first no-bid contract went to a Virginia-based company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, to seal leaky joints between the pool’s concrete slabs and coat the slabs with the dark blue waterproofing material. The second went to Ohio-based Greenwater Services to add an upgraded water-purification system.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings completed its work on June 4, and the pool was refilled soon after. Greenwater Services has also finished installing the new purification system.
On Sunday, workers with the National Park Service waded in the Reflecting Pool and appeared to skim some algae blooms off the surface. They were joined by workers with Pearl Purity Water Solutions, a Maryland-based company that has held a contract since 2021 to treat the pool’s water.
Representatives for Greenwater Services and Pearl Purity Water Solutions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Monday, as Park Service workers continued to clear the algae, throngs of tourists strolled around the pool in the summer sun. Bonnie Garvin, a teacher from Monticello, Ga., said she was unbothered by the green hue.
“We’re not swimming in it, so it’s not really an issue,” Ms. Garvin said.
But Jessica Lea, a therapist from Portland, Ore., said she was disappointed by her first visit to the century-old landmark.
“It’s pretty swampy,” she said. “It could be cleaner. And I can’t see any reflecting.”
David A. Fahrenthold contributed reporting.
Maxine Joselow covers climate change and the environment for The Times from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on June 17, 2026, Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Algae Turn ‘American Flag Blue’ Pool Green.
Firm Tied to Trump Donor Got No-Bid Contract to Clean Reflecting Pool
David A. Fahrenthold has been covering no-bid contracts given out by the Trump administration.
A business tied to a longtime supporter of President Trump was given a no-bid contract to install a water-purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this spring.
Now that work is coming under scrutiny after algae blooms have come back and turned the iconic pool in Washington a vibrant shade of green rather than the American-flag blue Mr. Trump says he chose.
The contract shows that the National Park Service bypassed the competitive-bidding process that is typically required, and gave a $1.7 million contract to the firm, Greenwater Services of Brookfield, Ohio.
Mr. Cafaro, a longtime Republican donor whom Mr. Trump has described as a “fantastic man,” was once involved in a high-profile bribery scandal. He has also donated to Democrats in the past, and his daughter Capri Cafaro served in the Ohio State Senate as a Democrat from 2007 to 2016.
On Thursday, when a photographer for The New York Times visited the pool, about half of its water remained green, as workers sought to vacuum out algae. Workers have also added hydrogen peroxide to the water in recent days in an attempt to kill the algae, the Interior Department said in an email to The Times.
The department, which oversees the National Park Service, said that the firm had already brought temporary water-purification sites to the pool, and that it was expected to install a permanent system this week.
Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the department, declined to say why the Park Service had refilled the pool before the permanent system was in place — raising the risk that it would quickly be clouded with algae.
The connection of Greenwater Services — also known as Green Water Solutions — to Mr. Cafaro is being reported first by The New York Times.
Neither Greenwater Services nor Mr. Cafaro responded to requests for comment on Thursday. The chief executive of Greenwater Services previously declined to comment to The Times about its contract.
Ms. Martin, the spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said that the department had not been aware of Mr. Cafaro’s political affiliation when it awarded the contract.
“This company was selected because they had the expertise, work force and materials” needed to complete the job in time, she said.
Ms. Martin and a White House spokeswoman both said the White House was not involved in the selection of this company.
The Times previously reported that David Schutzenhofer, the general manager of Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., advised the Park Service on the project and was in contact with Greenwater in January.
The Reflecting Pool’s water is circulated via underground pipes to a nearby building full of filters and water purifiers. The Park Service had planned for years to upgrade that system by adding a “nano bubble” device that killed algae with tiny bubbles of ozone gas.
In a public filing, the Park Service said that multiple firms had expressed interest in providing such a system. But in April, it gave the work directly to Greenwater Services, a company that federal records show had received only one other federal contract.
The Park Service justified its decision to bypass competition by citing an exemption meant for urgent situations: It said there was no time to consider other offers because the system had to be installed in time for events celebrating the country’s 250th birthday. That document did not give a specific date by which the system had to be installed.
Another no-bid contract for $14.7 million had been awarded to a Virginia firm, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, for the same reason of urgent need. That business was paid to spread blue waterproofing material on the pool’s concrete floor.
That work, too, shows signs of potential trouble. On Thursday, a section of the pool’s new layer of blue waterproofing appeared to have detached from the bottom and floated to the pool’s surface.
Ms. Martin, the Interior Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on that. Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to a request for comment.
Greenwater Services was founded in 2019 in Ohio. State records in Ohio and Florida show that it has shared two addresses, a phone number and an email with Mr. Cafaro and his trusts.
Crews continued to clean up the algae accumulation on Thursday.Salwan Georges for The New York Times
Mr. Cafaro’s family business was in developing shopping centers, but he branched into other industries, including aerospace. He pleaded guilty in 2001 to conspiracy to bribe Representative James A. Traficant Jr., Democrat of Ohio, and later testified against Mr. Traficant.
Mr. Cafaro’s ties to Mr. Trump go back at least 10 years. In 2016, Mr. Trump boycotted a Republican debate and held a competing event, a televised fund-raiser for veterans causes. One of the major donors was Mr. Cafaro, who gave $50,000.
“J.J. Cafaro from Florida and from Cleveland: He’s a man who made a lot of money in Cleveland, does a good job, and a fantastic man,” Mr. Trump said from the stage. “J.J., thank you.”
Mr. Cafaro told The Palm Beach Daily News at the time that Ivanka Trump, the future president’s daughter, had called him to ask for the gift.
Since then, campaign finance records indicate that Mr. Cafaro has given more than $300,000 to political committees connected to Mr. Trump. When the president’s Mar-a-Lago Club hosted the lavish International Red Cross Ball in 2017, Mr. Cafaro’s wife, Janet, was the event’s chairwoman.
Salwan Georges contribute reporting.
David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
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