The Trump administration completed its $14.2 million renovations to the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool last week, intending to color the water feature “American Flag Blue,” but days later the pool’s notorious algae returned to color the reservoir bright green.
The Department of the Interior said the algae bloom turning the pool green was being “vacuumed up as we speak.”
Photos and videos appeared to show National Park Service workers in waders cleaning up the algae with hand tools on Sunday, although the pool still appeared green in photos the next day.
“The National Park Service is actually maintaining the beautifully completed Reflecting Pool,” Katie Martin, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, told Forbes in a statement, blaming past presidential administrations for failing to adequately clean up the algae bloom.
Martin said the Trump administration installed “nanobubblers” that “successfully destroyed the algae bloom that has plagued every pool reopening since 1922.”
