Trump Spent $13.1 Million Painting the Reflecting Pool "American Flag Blue" — It Turned Green with Algae in One Day. Workers Are Now Dumping Hydrogen Peroxide into It

The president of the United States spent $13.1 million painting a pool blue. It turned green in one day. Workers are now pouring hydrogen peroxide into it by the gallon. This is a real story about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The renovation

Trump personally chose the color — a vibrant dark blue he calls "American Flag Blue." He ordered the 2,028-foot-long Reflecting Pool repainted ahead of America's 250th birthday celebrations. He described it in the Oval Office: "They can't believe it reflects. We used a dark blue, it's called American flag blue."

On May 7, Trump's motorcade drove across the drained Reflecting Pool so he could inspect the work in person. He boasted:

"It's much more beautiful than it was new because it never had the color people wanted, but now it's going to have the great color."

On June 6, he posted to Truth Social: "All work is complete!" alongside a photo of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum "inspecting the very complex, but powerful, Dark Blue surface of the Reflecting Pool, prior to submerging it in CLEAN, BEAUTIFUL WATER."

Burgum has joked that he has become Trump's "pool guy."

The algae

One day after refilling, the pool turned green.

Workers were seen cleaning out clumps of algae that transformed the pool's "American Flag Blue" into mossy green. They scooped algae with nets and guided underwater tubes to suck out dirty water. By Friday, the algae was back. After the weekend's heat, the entire pool was chartreuse.

Despite the water being visibly green, the White House posted a photo on Monday touting the Reflecting Pool — using an image that showed the water as blue. At the time of the post, the water was green.

On Tuesday, June 16, videos shared on social media showed workers dumping gallon bottles of hydrogen peroxide into the 2,028-foot pool. The Interior Department described it as "a milder treatment than chlorine" that "is used in spas and specialty pools." The administration also deployed a $1.7 million "ozone nanobubbler" filtration system that it said was "actively killing algae, pathogens (e.g., E. coli), and contaminants that have long plagued the Reflecting Pool since 1922."

As of late Tuesday, the water near the Lincoln Memorial had turned blue-gray, while the east end near the World War II Memorial remained bright green as crews poured chemicals and strained the water by hand.

One worker told CNN that cleaning the pool could take "an entire lifetime."

Why it was inevitable

Steve Goodale, a pool specialist, explained that the darker blue paint absorbs more sunlight, which raises the water temperature, which accelerates algae growth:

"If we change nothing else except the color, and we go from a lighter color to a darker color, absolutely you're going to have more prolific algae growth. It's a foregone conclusion."

The original Reflecting Pool had a dark grey, achromatic basin — not because designers lacked paint, but because the muted tone was essential to creating the mirror-like reflection the pool is famous for. As historians noted: "The dark grey, achromatic basin was not incidental to the design. It was the design."

Additional factors working against the renovation:

• The pool draws its water from the Tidal Basin — essentially filtered Potomac River water, already nutrient-rich and prone to algae
• A New York Times investigation found that the 12-inch plastic pipes circulating water to the filtration plant frequently rupture under soil pressure — the renovation ignored these leaks entirely
• The pool is 300,000+ square feet — larger than 10 Olympic-sized pools — and holds 6.5 million gallons, making treatment at scale extraordinarily difficult
• Washington, D.C., in June routinely exceeds 90°F — ideal algae conditions

They painted over the infrastructure problem. Literally.

The contractor

The $13.1 million no-bid contract went to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia company. Key details:

• This was the company's first federal contract
• Its prior pool work: the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia
• The company was allowed to start work before agreeing on the price
• An internal National Park Service analysis found a 20% profit margin — the federal norm for such work is 6-12%. This means the company is charging taxpayers at least $850,000 more than a standard contract
• The company added another 20% for overhead on top of the inflated profit. A Park Service contracting specialist described the combined figure as "excessive"
• Documents show Atlantic Industrial Coatings failed to properly seal the concrete gaps twice — workers had to remove material and start again

The cost escalation

The budget trajectory:

• Trump initially said: $1.8 million, about a week to complete
• First contract award: $6.9 million (no-bid)
• Contract doubled to: $13.1 million
• Trump later said: "We'll probably be in it for less than $20 million"
• The $1.7 million nanobubbler system adds further cost

The Interior Department attributed the sevenfold increase to speeding up the project in time for the 250th birthday celebrations — "more workers working longer hours."

The lawsuit

The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to historic landscape preservation, sued the Trump administration in May to block the painting. Their arguments:

• The administration violated Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires public consultation before altering historic properties
• "No consulting parties have been notified, engaged, or given an opportunity to participate"
• The original grey basin was a "character-defining feature" protected under preservation law — "it was the design"
• The dark blue makes the pool look like a swimming pool, not a reflecting pool

The response

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):

"American taxpayers ought to feel absolutely cheated."

Social media users noted the pool had gone from "American Flag Blue" to "Iranian flag green." One user wrote: "Happy Birthday Donald. You've renewed and invigorated the Swamp."

The Interior Department's official position: the algae is "residual" from supply lines that were dormant during construction and part of the "normal startup process."

What happened before

For context: the Obama administration spent $34 million on a full structural renovation of the Reflecting Pool in 2012, including a new steel-reinforced foundation and ozone filtration system. Algae returned within a month. Trump mocked this relentlessly.

He then spent $13.1 million painting the same pool blue, gave a no-bid contract to a company from his golf club, ignored the broken pipes, chose a color that a pool expert said would guarantee worse algae, and watched it turn green in 24 hours. Workers are now dumping hydrogen peroxide into it by hand.

The president who drove across the Reflecting Pool to brag about its color is now paying people to pour chemicals into it and hope. The pool that was supposed to be "American Flag Blue" for the 250th birthday is — as of this writing — green. The swamp, it turns out, is a very difficult thing to drain.