No bid contract to a friend of Trump's in the hotel pool industry. The idea stemmed from Trump seeing the park service scrape algae off the top because of ongoing filtration issues. That's it. He just wants to hide the algae. It's so dumb, and as far as I understand it, pool paint is nearly impossible to remove.

Hey did you know that darker colors reflect less sunlight? They turn a substantial portion of light into heat; I wonder if that will affect the algae. I also wonder how he ever thought something on the bottom of the pool was supposed to hide the surface. That's not how occlusion works.

Are they using felt-tipped pens to paint it? Cause that’s what it looks like in every single picture.

My favourite? The overspray. Really classes up the national monument. Chef's kiss.

From a technical sense, its dark blue, which will basically absorb all light except blue. Water should absorb blue pretty good. So you'll have a nice water evaporator. It's good for the sinuses.

From what I understand, his Arc de Trump (seriously, that's what it's called), is going to be located between the pool and the Washington Monument, and will be TALLER than the the Washington Monument. He's making sure it gets a nice reflection.

Lovely.

Thats awful. Can't beleive you guys are just letting that man trash your country.

Using funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the National Park Service reconstructed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The pool's water supply system was updated to eliminate stagnant water by circulating water from the Tidal Basin; the pool was formerly filled using potable water from the city.

Seems like algae and other water-borne nasties have been a thing since they started pumping the tidal basin water in.

I get it, don't waste drinking water, but I don't think pumping untreated water into a space without natural flow is going to work. You're basically making stagnant water and a lovely home for algae. Unless there was a steady stream of in/out at a fairly high refresh rate, you're going to get funk. You're trading the consumption of water for consumption of energy to run a pump system 24/7.

Either they need to fully naturalize it by adding plants and other life that balances out things or go full chem. It would still need to be circulated. Just throwing ozone into the water ain't gonna cut it. At that point, you may as well just run a full pool pump system (big one) and filter system with a sanitizer like chlorine or bromine. Potable water has a small amount of chlorine in it already, that's why it wasn't as bad with potable water.

If you start with sanitizer, I would presume that the unfinished concrete wouldn't last long. That may be what is going on. I'm not going to give anyone credit here, but sealing the surface prior to adding sanitizer makes sense. I think there are ways to sanitize with hydrogen peroxide, but I don't know if it would work on a scale like this. Most pools are deeper; this thing is only like 18 inches deep. That means very high evaporation relative to the total volume. Even with chlorine which deteriorates in sunlight, any sanitzing agent will will be quickly consumed. If you're pumping in basin water with lots of organic material and then throwing chlorine into it, the result will be a lot of nitrogen trichloride aka chloramine. It smells like pool, but with this much surface area it will be REALLY smelly.

That would be a fitting result of all of this. A giant pool of chemical soup and a resultant stink so nasty that nobody can go near it.

So we have the Epstein pedo party ballroom, and now we have the Epstein pedo party pool.

Idk... The Walmart blue really gives it some authority.

Painting this pool a darker color than the concrete that is already there is one of the dumbest things ever. President Pedo routinely lives in opposite world. Complete idiot and waste of DNA.

Not my pictures: "Reflecting Pool Boondoggle" Flickr Album.

This one in particular has a lot of details that reward / punish close zoomed-in examination, I think.

This one shows that some of the banners surrounding the site have been defaced, including at least two sections which appear to have been sliced out with a box cutter or something similar. I'm curious what was on those parts that were removed.

News about the pool project got me to dig into my crummy tourist snapshots from 2024. And the reflecting pool appeared ... blue? What are we after with all this, again?

Maybe the real purpose is to keep the president occupied with trivia, distracted from whatever the vile shits behind his throne are up to.

Can I ask why they are painting the floor blue?

The real news is that was a Trump's choice contractor that would do the job for $1.8 million but the cost got to around $13 million..

Wtf am I looking at?

Stupid is as stupid does.

A literal stain on our nation.

So much beauty coming out of America these days........

I love how Donald trump is a bad business guy and always fails (upward it seems...sigh). I have to laugh, though, when he even fails at painting concrete. This is a kindergarten level skill we're talking about here. Is there nothing he can do?

Fun fact: Two different Captain Americas jogged around the reflecting pool.