St. Johns County Commission has STILL not responded to 25 suggestions on government reform. Why not?

UPDATE: June 30, 2026 Still waiting.  Like "Waiting for Godot."  

It has been some 1569 days.

That is 4 years, three months and fifteen days.

Tick, tock. 

Time flies when one-party rulers are refusing to talk about government reform. 

"Duil Republicans" is what the late David Brian Wallace called them.

Pitiful 

UPDATE: MAY 24, 2026: Still waiting.....

UPDATE: APRIL 27, 2026: Still no response to my 25 suggestions to St. Johns County Commission on March 15, 2022, in response to their attempting to foist an unwanted 15% sales tax increase on us, for the seventh time.  It has been four (4) years, one (1) month and thirteen (13) days.    That is twice the gestation period of an elephant, whose large size and big brain requires it.

But kudos to Sheriff Robert Hardwick, who was responsive and responsible in response to my Budget debate discussion, provided body-worn cameras and dashboard cameras.   Disgraced former Sherriff DAVID SHOAR, who covered up the Michelle O'Connell murder, publicly said that he rejected the "notion" that "cops need to be watched." 

UPDATE: MARCH 28, 2026, NO KINGS DAY: March 15, 2022 was a day that will forever live in infamy. Four St. Johns County Commmissioners voted to ask us to increase sales taxes by 15%. We turned them down -- seventh time since 2022 that wise County voters rejected sales tax referenda. That same day I made 25 suggestions for government reform. Never got a response from any Commissioner. One-party rule is wrong. Vote them out. Footnote: One of 25 suggestions was honored, by Sheriff Robert Hardwick.  Our SJC Sheriff now has body-worn cameras and dashboard cameras. Prior Sheriff refused to provide them, based on his rejection of what he called the "false narrative" that "cops need to be watched."

Our County Commissioners lack a welcoming spirit. Developers rule. Citizen concerns are ignored. 

That's why Krista Keating-Joseph defeated County Commissioner JEREMIAH RAY BLOCKER.

When I made 25 suggestions for local government reform on March 15, 2022, there was no response from any of our County Commissioners.

None wrote back.

None proposed any reforms in response.

Still no response. 

While snollygosters demand a 15% sales tax increase, there seem to be no fans of this noisome nasty nostrum. 

Meanwhile, no response, not even a thank you, on 25 ideas for government reform. 

Wonder why?

Wake up, somnambulistic St. Johns County Commissioners.

"Let's get to work," as Senator RICHARD LYNN SCOTT said in his campaign.

Here are the e-mails showing the ideas proposed.  Enough insolent insouciance of County Commissioners too focused on developer coddling to consider reforming our County government:

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com>
To: bcc5hdean@sjcfl.us <bcc5hdean@sjcfl.us>; bcc1cwhitehurst@sjcfl.us <bcc1cwhitehurst@sjcfl.us>; bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us <bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us>; bcc3pwaldron@sjcfl.us <bcc3pwaldron@sjcfl.us>; bcc4jblocker@sjcfl.us <bcc4jblocker@sjcfl.us>
Cc: dmigut@sjcfl.us <dmigut@sjcfl.us>; hconrad@sjcfl.us <hconrad@sjcfl.us>; sheriff@sjso.org <sheriff@sjso.org>; taxcollector@sjctax.us <taxcollector@sjctax.us>; voakes@votesjc.org <voakes@votesjc.org>; wfusco@votesjc.com <wfusco@votesjc.com>; bpatty@stjohnsclerk.com <bpatty@stjohnsclerk.com>; mminer@stjohnsclerk.com <mminer@stjohnsclerk.com>; eddie@sjcpa.us <eddie@sjcpa.us>; waltbog@nytimes.com <waltbog@nytimes.com>
Sent: Mon, Aug 29, 2022 6:22 pm
Subject: Re: 25 suggestions for St. Johns County government reform

Dear St. Johns County Commissioners:
1. Where are your manners?  I wrote each one the five of you with 25 suggestions for local government reform on March 15, 2022.  Not one of you bothered to write me in response. 

2. Why?  (Sounds like an admission by silence and adoptive admission to me.)

3. Tens of thousands of St. Johns County voters on August 23, 2022 voted for government reform. They voted to tell our Board of County Commissioners, "Enough."

4. They voted out Commissioner Jeremiah Ray Blocker in the closed Republican Primary, electing Ms. Krista Keating-Joseph, who opposes overdevelopment  They voted to say to you, "Enough."

5. Where are our police body cameras and police dashboard cameras?

6. When will you restore non-agenda public comment at the beginning of each meeting?

7. Please respond to each of the 25 numbered points in my March 15, 2022 email, below, sent to you 167 days ago (five months and fourteen days).

8. "Is anybody there?  Does anybody care?" (In the words that General George Washington once wrote to the Continental Congress, shared in the musical, 1776).

9. Thank you, Commissioners, for all that you do.

10. Now, let's get to work on the people's business for a change.  Always remember, from this day forward, that We, the People, have hired you to work for us, not for dodgy developers.  Please call me to discuss our County's future.

https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2022/08/democracy-on-march-right-here-in-st.html

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

www.edslavin.com

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

904-377-4998

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com>
To: bcc5hdean@sjcfl.us <bcc5hdean@sjcfl.us>; bcc1cwhitehurst@sjcfl.us <bcc1cwhitehurst@sjcfl.us>; bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us <bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us>; bcc3pwaldron@sjcfl.us <bcc3pwaldron@sjcfl.us>; bcc4jblocker@sjcfl.us <bcc4jblocker@sjcfl.us>
Cc: dmigut@sjcfl.us <dmigut@sjcfl.us>; hconrad@sjcfl.us <hconrad@sjcfl.us>; sheriff@sjso.org <sheriff@sjso.org>; taxcollector@sjctax.us <taxcollector@sjctax.us>; voakes@votesjc.org <voakes@votesjc.org>; wfusco@votesjc.com <wfusco@votesjc.com>; bpatty@stjohnsclerk.com <bpatty@stjohnsclerk.com>; mminer@stjohnsclerk.com <mminer@stjohnsclerk.com>; eddie@sjcpa.us <eddie@sjcpa.us>; waltbog@nytimes.com <waltbog@nytimes.com>
Sent: Tue, Mar 15, 2022 5:13 am
Subject: 25 suggestions for St. Johns County Commission to consider before asking voters to approve a 15%+ tax increase.

Dear Commissioners:

I have 25 suggestions for St. Johns County Commission to consider before asking voters to approve a 15%+ tax increase.

Please call me to discuss:

I will oppose the 15%+ sales tax increase, unless we have significant government reform, covering every government office, from City Halls to County Commission to School Board:

1. Require body-worn cameras for all law enforcement, with dashboard cameras in all vehicles.  Reject former Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's 2016 ukase that there is "a false narrative" that law enforcement needs to be watched."  Accountability for everyone.  No excuses. No more delays.
2. Create a County Charter Review Commission composed of everyday citizens to propose a new form of government, with checks and balances, human rights protections and a charter for limited government. Put their proposals on the ballot for us to vote on at the same time as any sales tax increase. 
3. Welcome, cherish, heed, publish and act on non-agenda public comment.  (The City of St. Augustine now omits non-agenda public comment from its minutes, while St. Johns County now puts it dead last at meetings, showing contempt for our democracy.) Stop insulting, interrupting, ignoring or heckling public questions and concerns.  
4. Answer public questions during "question time" like the British Parliament, by adopting the "Mayor Gary Snodgrass rule" from the City of St. Augustine Beach, requiring public commenters' questions to be answered, instead of ignored.  The City of Flagler Beach has a similar procedure. It also has non-agenda public comment at both the beginning and end of meetings, "so nothing gets missed," says their new Chairman, J. Kenneth Bryan, a Justice Department retiree and former St. Johns County Commission Chairman.  Unconstitutional County Commission rules prohibit citizens "demanding an immediate answer," but usually we get no answer at all. Ever.
5. Televise all government meetings and allow remote public participation, like School Board.
6. Put government documents online, including all conteacts. Stop blocking and discouraging records requests with fee-grabbing.  Prohibit any government from using an auto-responder to answer records requests and requiring a named, living breathing person to sign correspondence (City of St. Augustine, Sheriff, FDLE, State Legislature and other government agencies have the annoying habit of having no named person sign records request correspondence, an Orwellian fetish.
7. Reform government purchasing as we know it. Report all instances of possible bid-rigging. Guard against government employees self-dealing (as with former Utilities supervisor RICHARD NELSON, fired for selling SCADA products to the County for years without criminal prosecution).
8. Stop giving tax holidays to dodgy corporations as "incentives," selling our soul to secretive unknown investors for unknown reasons.
9. Require lobbying registration and disclosures. 
10. Require transparency in development, starting with disclosing the names of every single beneficial owner and investor in every single development project.  Russian investors must be subject to sanctions and full disclosure. 
11. Developer money-laundering must be exposed and reported. 
12. Require disclosure of all sources of foreign and domestic money in politics. 
13. Create a County Ethics Commission with tough local laws, public hearings and enforcement to extirpate corruption, discrimination and secrecy.
14. Encourage and protect whistleblowers, to end corruption as we know it.  Always hold accountable anyone who would presume to retaliate against a whistleblower.  Inform employees and contractors of their rights.  Adopt a County whistleblower protection policy, ordinance and resolution.
15. Treat employees fairly, paying living wages and an end to favoritism, sexual harassment, secrecy and retaliation against whistleblowers.
16. Create a County Environmental Board with  regulatory powers to halt or limit devious developers' wetland-filling, wildlife-killing, deforestation, clear-cutting.
17. Provide for five single-member County Commission districts, like the School Board has, in order to reduce the influence of developers' Big Money and empower of citizen legislators.  Add two at-large Commission seats, running county-wide. 
18. Adopt a working committee system, with committees to vet budgets and development proposals before half-baked proposals go to the full County Commission or City Commissions.  
19. Provide each Commissioner with a legislative assistant, as they had before 2010
20. Support statewide legislation to revise impact fees as we know them.  
21. Stop subsidizing metastatic growth -- unchecked growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.
22. Create an Ombudsman to advocate for citizens and taxpayers, ending the disgusting legislative dance of County and City staff acting as de facto or de jure developer puppets.
23. Focus on protecting public health from known environmental health hazards.  There is no legal protection for employee safety in Florida since Jeb Bush helped abolish Florida OSHA in 2000. Local governments are inconsistent in protecting public health, as proven by our County School Superintendent's insolent and insouciant refusal to replace moldy wrestling mats, stored in showers, causing illnesses among the members of the St. Augustine High School Wrestling Team 
24. Enhance the powers of our Clerk of Courts Inspector General, with job protections and enhanced budget, with authority to investigate any local government agency, subject to a County Charter approved by the voters.
25. Consider Zero Based Budgeting, as President Jimmy Carter supported. Don't assume every department or office gets an increase. Some need to be cut. My late mentor, United States Department of Labor Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt, said any government budget could be cut by 10%.  Every government needs to examine every expenditure with a gimlet eye, and stop extravagant spending on what President Abraham Lincoln would have called "flubdubs." For every spending request and every piece of legislation ask, "Is it based on need, or greed?" (As Senator Gary Hart asked his staff to evaluate every single legislative proposal as a freshman Senator). 

If Commissioners want a 15%+ sales tax increase, they must answer, "what have you done to deserve this?" 

Thank you.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

904-377-4998

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

www.edslavin.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com>
To: bcc5hdean@sjcfl.us <bcc5hdean@sjcfl.us>; bcc1cwhitehurst@sjcfl.us <bcc1cwhitehurst@sjcfl.us>; bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us <bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us>; bcc3pwaldron@sjcfl.us <bcc3pwaldron@sjcfl.us>; bcc4jblocker@sjcfl.us <bcc4jblocker@sjcfl.us>
Cc: dmigut@sjcfl.us <dmigut@sjcfl.us>; hconrad@sjcfl.us <hconrad@sjcfl.us>; sheriff@sjso.org <sheriff@sjso.org>; taxcollector@sjctax.us <taxcollector@sjctax.us>; voakes@votesjc.org <voakes@votesjc.org>; wfusco@votesjc.com <wfusco@votesjc.com>; bpatty@stjohnsclerk.com <bpatty@stjohnsclerk.com>; mminer@stjohnsclerk.com <mminer@stjohnsclerk.com>; eddie@sjcpa.us <eddie@sjcpa.us>; waltbog@nytimes.com <waltbog@nytimes.com>
Sent: Sun, Mar 13, 2022 2:40 pm
Subject: Addition to Consent Agenda for 3/15 SJC BoCC meeting re: Preparing Draft Resolution Changing Constitutional Officers' Tentative Budget Submission Deadline

Dear Chairman Dean, et :
1. Would you please be so kind as to add to the March 15, 2022 St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners Consent Agenda a direction to staff to prepare a resolution requiring Constitutional officers to submit tentative proposed budgets by May 1 each year?  See F.S. 129.03(3), allowing Florida BoCCs "by resolution, [to] require the tentative budgets to be submitted by May 1 of each year. "

2.  Passage of the resolution would mean for the first time that we can discuss in detail and ask questions about tentative Sheriff, Supervisor of Elections, Clerk of Courts and Comptroller, Tax Collector and Property Appraisers budgets at our annual May budget hearings. 

3. In asking for a 15%+ sales tax increase, we must start with candor.  Let's have honest discussions of the constitutional officers' budgets. 

4. I have made this modest request for several years, since learning of the statute from Mr. Jesse Dunn's briefing to BoCC. 

5. Please require that staff answer all budget questions, with all budget meetings televised with remote and in-person public participation.

6. Curiously, our County Administrator told me at the May 2021 hearing, "I don't have to answer your questions."

7. Chairman Dean and Commissioners, will you kindly help protect our free speech and petition rights and our Right to Know?  Please help extirpate end end forever the continuing hostile working environment toward First Amendment activity, too often violating rights secured by Article I, Section 24 of our Floida Constitution, adopted by the will of 3.8 million voters in 1992 (83% of the vote).

Thank you.

With kindest regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,

Ed Slavin

904-377-4998

www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com

www.edslavin.com

RON ESTES, R.I.P. (St Augustine Record obituary)

Godspeed to Ron Estes.  Thank you for your service to our Nation, sir, and to western civilization!  

Mr. Estes and I were both frequent commenters on the St. Augustin e Record's "Talk of the Town" website, which many will recall was once robust and uninhibited, a forum for free voices (pre-GANNETT hedge fund takeover).  

Mr. Estes and I often disagreed, but I reckon that we respected each other.

Three cheers for Ron Estes, for intelligent dialogue among St. Augustine and St. Johns County neighbors, and for First Amendment values.

Salud!  

Cheers!

Ronald Edward Estes, after a lifetime of eluding death on his doorstep, passed away peacefully with his loving family close by on Sunday, October 13, 2024. Born in Washington, DC, on June 28, 1931, to Edward and Edna Estes, he was reared on a 5-acre family compound built by his grandfather in 1906 in Arlington, Virginia. After contracting polio at age 13, Ron had to relearn to speak and swallow. However, by the time he reached high school, he was a baseball pitcher whose team won the Virginia State Championship and he was sought after by professional teams. In 1950, Ron and several of his buddies joined the Marine Corps.

Arriving at Inchon, Korea, 1952, Ron served 11 months in Korea. Wounded in combat, he declined accepting a Purple Heart to save his parents the worrisome news. After completing his service with the Marines, Ron enrolled at Virginia Tech in 1954, where in the fall of his senior year, he was approached by a recruiter from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Upon graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor’s degree in sociology, Ron joined the CIA, where he was commissioned as an Operations Officer in the Clandestine Service. Upon completion of initial training, including language training, he received his first overseas assignment, to Kavalla, Greece, which became the setting for his first novel, published in 2003, The Mission: CIA in the Balkans.

After 16 months in Kavalla, Ron was transferred to Athens, Greece, and later to Nicosia, Cyprus, as one of two fluent Greek-speaking operations officers in the station. After serving in Cyprus, Ron continued overseas assignments in Prague, (then) Czechoslovakia, and Beirut, Lebanon. In 1973, Ron was transferred back to Athens, to be Deputy Chief of Station with his colleague from Cyprus days, Richard Welch, as Chief of Station. The two friends took over the Athens Station as they had vowed to do 13 years earlier, but tragically Dick Welch was assassinated in 1975, the first-ever CIA Chief of Station to be killed in the line of duty. It was a huge personal loss for Ron, who cradled Welch in his arms that night, and then assumed command of the Athens station. His final overseas tour was as Chief of Station in Madrid, Spain.

During his career Ron was a target for assassination on more than one occasion and was the cover feature in Spain’s version of TIME magazine, CAMBIO 16. While stationed in Washington, DC, Ron was the deputy chief of the CIA European division and later chief of one of the Clandestine service divisions. His efforts over the years were so successful that he was awarded the highest honor the CIA can bestow, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.

After his retirement from the CIA, Ron formed a company representing American companies overseas. He retired fully in 1990 and took up golf while living in Clifton, Virginia. Ron and his wife Luba moved to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1996. In retirement, Ron wrote a second novel, The Recruitment, based on operations in Beirut, and published columns nationwide to educate the American public on the plight of the Palestine people and the war crimes they endure to this day. He also co-chaired a forum on the Middle East with Senator George McGovern at Flagler College. For seven years, Ron was the longest serving President of the Marsh Creek Men’s Golf Association.

Ron was pre-deceased by his first wife and mother of his children, Ann Estes, sister Janet Yanette, and beloved son, Wesley Estes. He is survived by his wife Luba Estes, daughters Debra Eason (Jay Moore), and Valerie Ragan (John Ragan), stepdaughters Elena “Kiki” Tovey (Carl Tovey, decd), and Anne “Anita” Healy (Jonathan Healy), grandchildren Megan Arnold, Matthew Eason (Amanda LaBorde), Dylan Tovey, Timothy and Alexandra Healy, and great-grandchildren James and Anne Arnold.

A celebration of life service will take place at the Marsh Creek Country Club in St. Augustine on November 16, 2024 from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.

Who in tarnation is Allison Schuster?

679 × 481

Voltaire said, '“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

In a June 28, 2026 New York Times article, "a White House spokeswoman, Allison Schuster, said: “There can constitutionally be no independent executive branch agencies because independence from the president would mean independence from the voters who elected him.”  "How trite," as my Mother would say.  Half-educated Hillsdale College graduate wrote errant nonsense for her school newspaper, and she has now been let loose upon the world, working for the America First Policy Institute before encumbering a P.R position at the White House.  Pray for her.

.

 

The all-natural way to fix the Reflecting Pool (Michael J. Coren column, WaPo, June 27, 2026)

Brilliant!  Thanks to Michael J. Coren for the inspiration.  In July 1976, I briefly swam in the Reflecting Pool during the American Revolution Bicentennial.  The water had recently been cleaned and treated.  But I, for one, prefer the natural solution proposed by Mr. Coren's column. 

From The Washington Post:

The all-natural way to fix the Reflecting Pool

Enlisting nature to help clean up the algae would be more patriotic than tossing in chemicals.

June 27, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. EDTYesterday at 5:00 a.m. EDT

10 min

(Illustration by Emma Kumer/The Washington Post; iStock)

Column by Michael J. Coren

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has predictably turned green again. No matter who is in office, no matter how much hydrogen peroxide is added, the shallow, sunbaked, nutrient-rich pool will remain an ideal home for the tiny green denizens of D.C.

Fixing the Reflecting Pool requires admitting the original mistake of the U.S. government, which built an algae farm on a former marsh.

Most politicians’ preferred response has been chemical warfare. The real answer lies in returning to our capital’s roots: Bring back the swamp.

Healthy, mature wetlands are often far cleaner and clearer than they appear. The tea-brown tint is tanninleached from fallen leaves, not muck. A balanced ecosystem of microbes and plants deprives algae of the nutrients they need to bloom.

So when I wanted to know what it would take to return the Reflecting Pool to its Edenic state, I didn’t consult swimming pool contractors. I called algae scientists, engineers and natural pool designers. 

A well-designed system of running water, gravel, microbes and wetland plants, they told me, could deliver crystal-clear water free of visible algae. It would slash the need for chemicals, electricity and maintenance in the troubled basin. We could even make it swimmable.

The technology is as old as life, and as modern as the thousands of natural pools and swimming pondssuccessfully installed around the world from Minnesota to Germany.

The national Reflecting Pool debacle has captured Americans’ attention because it distills so much about our the nation’s dysfunction: grandiose ambitions; minimal planning, overpriced quick fixes; and catastrophic outcomes followed by deflection or denial of responsibility by those in charge. Rehabilitating the pool to reflect the Potomac Mudflats’ original glory would help rejuvenate, in some small way, the country’s faith in itself. 

This will not happen by the nation’s 250th birthday. The Interior Department declined to answer questions about whether it would consider a more natural approach. 

But an administration brave enough to do so could make the Reflecting Pool a turning point for the U.S. government’s posture toward the natural world. We can enlist nature as an ally rather than fight it to the death in a war we can’t win.

What could be more patriotic than a system designed by America’s best engineers and ecologists, yet inspired and managed by the original inhabitants of America’s capital — its microbes, plants and wildlife?

Forget draining the swamp. Restore it. Here’s how.

An alligator prowls the waters in the Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

Nature undefeated

Algae are remarkable organisms. The photosynthetic bacteria, protists and other microbes are found in all waters of the world, from the smallest ponds to the biggest oceans, said Pat Glibert, a phytoplankton ecologist who studies algal blooms at the University of Maryland.

While no bigger than the width of a human hair, they turn sunlight, nutrients and water into life itself. About half the oxygen we breathe, and the foundation of the aquatic food chain, are thanks to algae. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.

These ecological workhorses can double their biomass in a day given the right conditions, such as a shallow basin of warm, nutrient-rich water — almost exactly what was built to honor Abraham Lincoln. “The fact that there is a bloom does not surprise me,” Glibert said. “It’s ideal growing conditions.”

Controlling algae by killing it in an enclosed body of water is a bit like pulling up the weeds from your garden, scattering their seeds around and then tossing fertilizer on top. Chemicals used to kill algae burst their cells, releasing organic matter back into the water: the perfect nutrient mix for growing new algae (as well as that scum National Park Service employees are always vacuuming out of the pool).

Healthy, mature wetlands are often far cleaner and clearer than they appear. The tea-brown tint is tanninleached from fallen leaves, not muck. A balanced ecosystem of microbes and plants deprives algae of the nutrients they need to bloom.

So when I wanted to know what it would take to return the Reflecting Pool to its Edenic state, I didn’t consult swimming pool contractors. I called algae scientists, engineers and natural pool designers. 

A well-designed system of running water, gravel, microbes and wetland plants, they told me, could deliver crystal-clear water free of visible algae. It would slash the need for chemicals, electricity and maintenance in the troubled basin. We could even make it swimmable.

The technology is as old as life, and as modern as the thousands of natural pools and swimming pondssuccessfully installed around the world from Minnesota to Germany.

The national Reflecting Pool debacle has captured Americans’ attention because it distills so much about our the nation’s dysfunction: grandiose ambitions; minimal planning, overpriced quick fixes; and catastrophic outcomes followed by deflection or denial of responsibility by those in charge. Rehabilitating the pool to reflect the Potomac Mudflats’ original glory would help rejuvenate, in some small way, the country’s faith in itself. 

This will not happen by the nation’s 250th birthday. The Interior Department declined to answer questions about whether it would consider a more natural approach. 

But an administration brave enough to do so could make the Reflecting Pool a turning point for the U.S. government’s posture toward the natural world. We can enlist nature as an ally rather than fight it to the death in a war we can’t win.

What could be more patriotic than a system designed by America’s best engineers and ecologists, yet inspired and managed by the original inhabitants of America’s capital — its microbes, plants and wildlife?

Forget draining the swamp. Restore it. Here’s how.

An alligator prowls the waters in the Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

Nature undefeated

Algae are remarkable organisms. The photosynthetic bacteria, protists and other microbes are found in all waters of the world, from the smallest ponds to the biggest oceans, said Pat Glibert, a phytoplankton ecologist who studies algal blooms at the University of Maryland.

While no bigger than the width of a human hair, they turn sunlight, nutrients and water into life itself. About half the oxygen we breathe, and the foundation of the aquatic food chain, are thanks to algae. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.

These ecological workhorses can double their biomass in a day given the right conditions, such as a shallow basin of warm, nutrient-rich water — almost exactly what was built to honor Abraham Lincoln. “The fact that there is a bloom does not surprise me,” Glibert said. “It’s ideal growing conditions.”

Controlling algae by killing it in an enclosed body of water is a bit like pulling up the weeds from your garden, scattering their seeds around and then tossing fertilizer on top. Chemicals used to kill algae burst their cells, releasing organic matter back into the water: the perfect nutrient mix for growing new algae (as well as that scum National Park Service employees are always vacuuming out of the pool).

“You’re fighting a losing battle,” Glibert said. It’s one the federal government has waged for a century.

Constructed on dredged Potomac marshland, the Reflecting Pool was paved with asphalt-and-tile and later, in the 1980s, with concrete. From its opening, the pool had leaks and poor water quality as it settled into the soft, marshy land below. By the 2010s, it was losing more than half a million gallons per week. When the basin was finally reconstructed in 2012, nearly all the changes were a gift to the algae. 

Engineers made it shallower, just 18 to 30 inches deep, and switched the water source from city drinking water to the nutrient-rich Potomac-fed Tidal Basin. A treatment plant was installed to recirculate up to about 1.7 million gallons a day, but the nutrients weren’t filtered out before the water returned to the pool. Most recently, the Trump administration’s decision to paint the pool a darker, sunlight-absorbing “American Flag Blue,” gave the algae a nutrient-rich hot tub.

Truly eradicating the algae with chemicals would be prohibitively expensive or potentially dangerous to everything near the pool, humans included. Even then, it would attack the symptom, not the cause: the nitrogen and phosphorus the algae feed on. The only durable fix is removing them.

To figure out how, I called the people who’ve spent three decades building swimming pools that work like ponds.

Heroic biofilm

James Robyn heeded the call of the family pool business in New Jersey in 1980, leaving behind a career in corporate computing. After three decades building conventional, chlorinated pools, he brought BioNova, a European natural-pool system, to the U.S. in 2007. He was later joined by Allen Schnaak, who came out of retirement from selling pool chemicals for three decades to build pools that clean water by growing life, not killing it.

I asked them if they could turn the Reflecting Pool into a chemical- and algae-free oasis in the middle of the nation’s capital.

“Could it be made into a natural pool? Sure,” Schnaak replied. “It’s not anything we’re inventing. All we’re doing is replicating the same environments that occur in nature: a stream with fast-moving water.”

Natural pool firm Bionova created AI-assisted renderings of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with natural filtration systems. (Courtesy of Bionova)

Water is alive. Rather than scrubbing it with chlorine, BioNova builds an ecosystem that creates the conditions for “gin-clear” water, Schnaak told me, like a running creek. “People begin chasing their tails when they start asking about how do you get rid of algae,” he said. “You don’t get rid of algae. What you do is you do not extend an invitation for it to come and stay. It will not grow if it doesn’t have anything to eat. That’s it. Cut the nutrients off.”

Bionova does that by retrofitting otherwise conventional pools with living ecosystems that strip water of the nutrients algae need.

One design is a biofilter: a small engineered wetland of plants, gravel and slow-moving water, where the plants take up the nitrogen and phosphorus directly. The second is a bioreactor: a tank or trench with gravel, usually limestone, covered by a biofilm of microorganisms that pull the same nutrients out of the water. Imagine the slick coating on a green river rock eating the algae’s lunch.

You don’t have to look far to see them in action. In north Minneapolis, the Webber Natural Swimming Poolis the first public natural swimming pool in North America to ditch chemicals. Since opening in 2015, the pool’s half-acre swimming zone (filtered by 7,000 aquatic plants rooted in layers of limestone and granite gravel) has welcomed thousands of people into its clean, clear water. Europe has taken the idea further and has more than 20,000 public and private natural swimming pools. The world’s first public natural swimming pool opened in Austria in 1990.

Is achieving such clean water possible on the National Mall? 

For a reality check, I asked Mick Hilleary of Total Habitat, which has built more than 80 natural pools around the world, including in unforgiving environments from India to Florida.

“It could be done,” he said. “It’s a tough challenge for biological filtering — and any other type, for that matter — because it’s so large and very shallow.” The ultimate solution, he speculated, would combine multiple approaches, including conventional and biological filters. “I enjoy a challenge,” Hilleary said, “and this is the biggest one I’ve seen lately.”

How much would it cost to fix the Reflecting Pool? BioNova wouldn’t offer an exact quote. “We’re not looking for this job,” Robyn said, but he ventured it would be in the “tens of millions,” an investment that would probably last much longer than President Donald Trump’s recent $14 million paint and resurfacing job.

Properly designed, as the rendering from BioNova shows, it could even enhance the original design intended to “recede beneath reflections of sky, trees and stone.” We could call it the Reflecting Swamp.

I’ll be crystal clear: I don’t know if this approach would work. What I do know is that the current strategy has not survived contact with reality, and unless we try something different, we will fail, over and over again.

The United States isn’t known for learning quickly from its mistakes. There’s an apocryphal line from Winston Churchill that Americans will always do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.

Well, we’ve tried everything else. The U.S. is engaged in asymmetric warfare with enemies, on multiple fronts, that have us surrounded and show no signs of surrendering.

It’s time to sign a truce with nature. Our alleged enemy will gladly switch sides and clean up the expensive mess we’ve made. All it asks in return is a marshy, ground-level condo on the nation’s front lawn. Then we can begin to restore not only the Reflecting Pool but, just maybe, our national relationship with a living world we depend on far more than it depends on us.

What readers are saying

The comments on the article discuss various perspectives on addressing the algae problem in the Reflecting Pool, with many suggesting natural solutions like using aquatic plants or creating a more ecological environment. Several comments criticize the current administration,... Show more

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