President Donald Trump demanded the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool be “fixed” starting five months ago, and one Republican commentator is saying that it might be time to simply “rip” it up.
Speaking on the CNN morning panel Friday, David Avella, chairman of GOPAC, a Republican state and local political training organization and super PAC, suggested that it might make sense to eliminate the 100-year-old Reflecting Pool altogether.
Trump’s investment began with a claim that it would only cost $1.5 million to $2 million to repair. That has now ballooned to $16 million with a new contract for another company that thinks it can fix the algae problem for $2.7 million. The company’s CEO told NBC Washington that they intend to fix the algae problem with chemicals, which hadn’t been an option in the past, since wildlife like ducks and other birds in the former marshland use the pool.
The National Park Service and D.C. District Attorney Jeanine Pirro labeled the work on the pool as “botched” after the new “American Flag Blue” liner began to peel and float.
“Famously, the president is somebody, as you just had in your last segment, [who] loves to build things, loves to put his name on things,” NOTUS national political reporter Elena Schneider explained on CNN.
“And I’m sure that he is not pleased about the fact that this is going over budget and way long,” she continued. “No contractor likes to do that. But nonetheless, this is part of his M.O. of what this administration has been all about.”
Host Audie Cornish said that the symbol of the Reflecting Pool, to her, has become “a rake. It’s stepping on a rake. It’s like [an] unnecessary cell phone, and it’s costing everyone money. And none of it had to happen.”
Avella claimed that presidents have been “stepping on that rake” since the pool was finished in the 1920s, though it didn’t get its first overhaul until 2010-2012.
“I mean, you’re looking at a Reflecting Pool that was built on the Potomac River mudflat, which shifts and you get cracks, and we have been dealing with it.”
“Then fix it!” said Cornish.
“So are you advocating that we get rid of the pool. That it’s been such a problem—” he asked.
Cornish cut him off to say that it almost looks like Trump is halfway there.
“Maybe it’s time to rip it up,” he suggested. Cornish noted the “botched job,” but Avella questioned whether the problem was the contractor or if the Reflecting Pool was messed up.
Avella said that there’s nothing that says the contractor who messed up can’t be held accountable.
CNN contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro brought it all back to politics, noting just how obsessed Trump is with these little projects at a time when Americans are suffering under an affordability crisis. So, spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars for Trump’s personal interests isn’t playing well.
A swimming pool expert told CNN months ago that the Reflecting Pool algae issue wasn’t likely to be solved because it’s so large, and any bird that uses the pool as its personal toilet would simply keep reintroducing bacteria that ultimately cause algae to grow.
The Reflecting Pool was first proposed in 1902 as a means of connecting the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It was overhauled during President Barack Obama’s administration from 2010 to 2012 to allow it to draw water from the Potomac River, rather than draining the city’s water supply of the 6.75 million gallons needed to fill it. The structure was also shored up using 2,000 piles driven into bedrock because the heavy granite was sinking. At that time, a circulation and filtration system designed to reduce algae blooms was installed, but the 12-inch supply and return pipes continue to leak and break.