President Donald Trump poured more than $14 million into a Reflecting Pool renovation that was completed earlier this month, but its refilling has been plagued by an intense algae bloom, and CNN wanted to get to the bottom of it.
The 300,000-square-foot pool has turned an increasingly murky shade of green, and the Department of Interior has sent crews to dump gallons of hydrogen peroxide and deploy special equipment to clean up the problem that's been a scourge to administrations for decades, reported CNN.
"President Trumphoped to turn the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool,what he called the 'American flagblue' – that's the color hewanted for the water," said "CNN News Central" co-host Sara Sidner. "But rightnow it's green as heck."
She turned to her colleague Betsy Kleini, who delved into the problem.
"The pool [is] growingincreasingly murky and green bythe day, and CNN even took anindependent sample of this waterlast week," Klein said. "We consulted with apool store, it showed thatphosphate levels were far higherthan what's recommended to keepalgae at bay, and since then, itonly got greener."
Algae expert Barrett Brooks, a researcher at The Smithsonian Institution, explained why the pool was the perfect environment for algae.
"This is a shallow pool with stagnantwater, abundant sunlight – thatcreates a situation whereopportunistic algae can reallytake advantage of the situation," Brooks said. "If there's already somephosphate fertilizer in thewater, that's reallyopportunistic, especially forthe blue-green algae that canfix nitrogen, so especially for the blue-green algae – they are havinga field day out here, probably."
The administration crews clad in hip waders tovacuum up clumps of algae, Klein reported, and the Department of Interior intends to use an ozone nanobubbler to vacuum up the algae bloom, but the problem persists.
"This morning, it's stillextremely green," Klein said. "This project,we know, has been a majorpriority for President Trump. He personally traveled into thatdrained pool in his motorcade toinspect its progress. The White House didn't respond to ourinquiry as to whether thepresident is aware of thesecleanup efforts, surprised bythe presence of algae or ifhe's talked to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum about it.But this is something that hasplagued many administrations,including back in 2012, when the Obama administration spent $34million over 18 months only tohave major algae issues."
"Around that time, the National Park Service found 80 dead ducksinside the pool," she added. "But ultimately,the Interior Department saysthat the nanobubbler and a full-time maintenance crew from the Fish and Wildlife Services aregoing to make these fixes morepermanent."