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Saturday, June 20, 2026
The blue paint is peeling off the Reflecting Pool (Maura Judkis, WaPo, June 20, 2026)
From The Washington Post:
The blue paint is peeling off the Reflecting Pool
An “American Flag Blue” paint sheet was seen floating on Thursday as workers cleaned algae after Trump’s $14 million renovation.
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Workers clean up the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool as algae levels spike and the new blue paint chips off on Thursday. (Photos by Christine Kao/The Washington Post)
For days, workers have been trying to rid the Reflecting Pool of algae after a more than $14 million renovation that President Donald Trump said was “done properly” and “could last for 100 years.”
But now workers have another problem to contend with: peeling paint. On Thursday, a sheet of the pool’s surface — painted in “American Flag Blue,” a color selected by the president — was seen floating in the water on the north side of the pool. It undulated in the water as curious tourists gathered, some of whom had come to see the green
At 5:35 p.m. on Thursday, a worker came to remove the sheet of pool surface, telling a Washington Post photographer not to photograph it, despite being on public land.
A piece of the new blue paint, a part of President Donald Trump’s renovation, peels off from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool on Thursday.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to questions about the paint and why the pool surface is separating. The agency said in a statement on Wednesday that it is treating the pool with hydrogen peroxide and “high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to effectively cut off the algae’s food supply.
Trump, in a social media post late Friday, claimed people were vandalizing the pool just as they “destroyed the grass” nearby. This month, U.S. Park Police and other agencies responded to what appeared to be etchings signaling opposition to Trump on the grounds of the National Mall.
Park Police officers patrolling the Lincoln Memorial area on Friday afternoon observed an individual peeling paint from the pool, a spokesperson for the department said via email. The person was arrested for destruction of government property.
The Park Police provided no additional details.
Steve Goodale, a swimming pool expert who viewed footage of the peeled sheet of paint, believes the pool’s surface may have been improperly prepared for the treatment.
“If there are any deficiencies with the surface prep, the surface can fail just like you see here,” he said, via email, “sheets and chunks peeling off.” Another culprit, he added, could be groundwater or pool water seeping underneath the lining.
Hydrogen peroxide can affect a pool’s surface, too, but not in the same way: “Less of a sheet peeling off and more like fading, hazing or breakdown of the material,” he said.
On Thursday, the Interior Department press office posted on X that “the Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool — just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.”
Indeed, some areas of the Reflecting Pool were looking cleaner compared with earlier in the week. Workers in chest-high waders stood in the middle of the pool and vacuumed the algae. The neon green-tinted water could be seen pouring out of tubes into nearby drainage grates. The center of the pool, though, was still neon green, and residual algae remained in the cleaned portions of the pool.
But this time would be different, the president promised. He touted his pool-building experience and praised the workmanship of his contractor, who got the job in a no-bid contract.
“I’m very proud of it,” Trump said in the Oval Office on June 3, saying that his six-week project had finally solved the pool’s yearslong leaking issues. “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”
Workers clean up the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool as algae levels spike and the new blue paint chips off on Thursday.
“This was not a paint job,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on June 5. “This was highly sophisticated material, industrial strength, that could last for 100 years, applied by very talented people.”
On Friday morning, the president reposted an artificial intelligence-generated video showing him filling the Reflecting Pool with what appeared to be critics’ tears (and blue-tinted water) on Truth Social.
Clumps of algae and blue paint coat the reflecting pool
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A collection of National Park Service employees and volunteers, dubbed in rubber waders, push loud vacuums across the pool’s floor.
One of the reasons TCLF filed its lawsuit is because the National Park Service did not perform a review as per the National Historic Preservation Act, said Charles A. Birnbaum, the organization’s president and CEO.
Under that review, they would have been required to consult subject area experts who could “identify potential problems — like algae and exfoliating paint — and, perhaps, suggest solutions,” said Birnbaum in a statement to The Post. “Instead, the Park Service granted themselves a ‘streamlined review,’ which they admitted was done under pressure from ‘White House leadership’ even though the project was ineligible.”
He concluded, “We can see the result.”
Visitors view the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool as algae levels spike and the new blue paint chips off on Thursday.
David J. Lynch, Christine Kao, Dan Diamond, Meg Kelly and Gray Battle contributed to this report.
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