Trump handed a $6.9 million no-bid contract to his swimming pool guy to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue. It may turn green by summer

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, built in 1922 as a link between monuments to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, is one of Washington’s most recognized landmarks. It was the backdrop for Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech in 1963, major protests against the Vietnam War, and many other historic gatherings. This spring, President Trump decided to have it painted blue.

The Trump administration used an exemption meant for urgent situations to award a $6.9 million no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings. By law, federal agencies are required to seek competitive bids for contracted work, but that did not happen here. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the project was being completed at “Trump speed” to ensure the landmark was ready ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said the renovations in the capital have “become a secretive project where the friends and business associates of the president are being rewarded with no public scrutiny.” The Reflecting Pool is the latest in a series of cases where the Trump administration skipped required competition and handed contracts directly to preferred vendors, per New York Times.

The blue paint job could be a costly fix that solves nothing

Trump has spoken about the Reflecting Pool renovations at least four times in recent weeks, saying the project shows his ability to cut through government red tape. “You’re going to end up with a beautiful, beautiful Reflecting Pool, the way it’s supposed to be,” Trump said in the Oval Office on April 23. “Much better than it ever was, actually.” 

However, government documents obtained by The New York Times show the contract has already cost far more than Trump said it would, and that repairs will be needed again much sooner than expected. As of last Thursday, the pool was still dry and mostly gray, with crews having applied dark blue paint to less than a quarter of its surface. 

Experts said the paint will not fix the real problem, a faulty plumbing and filtration system, which has caused the pool to turn green and murky within a month in the past. The government has agreed to pay $6.9 million for the work, more than triple the $1.8 million Trump had publicly promised. This is not the first time Trump’s decisions have drawn sharp criticism, as seen when his Project Freedom launch angered Saudi Arabia.

The pool stretches 2,000 feet and has dozens of joints that are prone to leaking. Between 2010 and 2012, the Obama administration spent more than $35 million trying to solve those problems and failed. The pool turned green within a month and still leaks 16 million gallons of water a year, which the National Park Service has to pay to replace. 

In 2019, during Trump’s first term, Park Service officials came up with a three-part plan: seal the joints, add a better filter, and replace two miles of broken pipes. Those repairs never happened. The pool’s shallow depth helps create its mirror-like reflection, but it also turns the water into a warm, algae-friendly environment under Washington’s summer sun.

Charles F. Sams III, who led the National Park Service under President Biden, said replacing the pipes was especially important, but the Park Service ended up just draining and cleaning the pool every year as a temporary fix. According to MS Now, landscape architects also raised concerns about the blue paint going ahead without a formal review.

The Reflecting Pool’s last major project went before the Commission of Fine Arts for review in 2010, but this time there was no such process. Peter Aeschbacher, a professor of landscape architecture at Penn State University, said the blue color might look very out of place when viewed from a higher angle, such as from the top of the Washington Monument. “It’s supposed to be invisible,” Aeschbacher said. 

Trump’s handling of national landmarks has not gone unnoticed by critics, including celebrities like Mark Hamill, whose anti-Trump posts kept stirring White House anger. The “urgency” exception used to skip the bidding process is normally meant for real emergencies like war or natural disasters. 

In this case, according to an Interior Department spokesperson, the urgency was “to ensure this project is done well ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.” She added that the contract was awarded properly. However, experts said that being behind schedule does not qualify as the kind of emergency this exception was designed for.