Trump's Motorcade Driving Across The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool May Have Contributed To Damage

The internet has filled up with swampy Reflecting Pool memes almost as quickly as the pool itself has filled with algae. However, traces of the intended "American Flag Blue" color are still visible on pieces of the painted liner that have separated and floated to the surface, reports CNN. There are several ways we could blame President Trump for this fiasco, with the primary finger of blame pointing at the handing of a no-bid government contract to a company that has never performed this kind of work before. But it certainly didn't help that Trump's motorcade drove directly across the drained Reflecting Pool while it was being painted either.

On May 7, Trump paid a visit to the Reflecting Pool to meet with reporters and inspect the new paint personally. To get there, the motorcade drove across the drained Reflecting Pool from the Washington Monument side. It made an impressive spectacle, but may have damaged the bottom of the pool in the process. Not that this administration cares much about science, but according to Scientific American:

The bottom of the pool may also have been affected by the presence of heavy equipment and trucks—and a presidential motorcade that drove through at one point—while the coating was being prepared and applied.

There appear to be two factors at play here. One of them is the liner that's been added to turn the Reflecting Pool blue. The other is the bottom of the pool itself.

Trump loves to criticize his predecessors, and the Reflecting Pool is no exception.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed by President Obama in 2009, invested $34 million into a major renovation of the Reflecting Pool. Among other things, it involved replacing the old leaky asphalt and tile bottom with concrete, according to Sika who provided the material. From its website:

The new reflecting pool is founded on 2,133 timber piles driven into the bedrock to [provide] more stable support. Corman Construction Inc., decided to utilize a watertight concrete system provided by Sika Corporation in order to meet the project specifications.

Those specifications almost certainly did not include driving a Presidential motorcade across its surface. The requirements of a surface to contain a pool are vastly different than the requirements of a road, which typically isn't built on top of timber piles. Water is heavy, but its weight is spread evenly across the entire floor, not into four small contact patches through the tires. 

The Presidential limo alone weighs upwards of 20,000 pounds. Two of them can be seen driving across the pool in photos, one containing the President, plus one decoy. The Secret Service's armored Chevy Suburban HD escorts weigh around 12,000 pounds each, according to The Drive. We don't know for sure, but it's entirely possible that these heavy vehicles could have cracked the concrete as they drove across it. This not only creates an uneven surface that the liner has a hard time adhering to, but could also allow moisture to penetrate from below. Swimming Pool Steve, who many media outlets have been consulting regarding the algae issue, calls this "negative hydrostatic pressure." In English, that means pressure from below the lining pushing it up and away from the surface it's supposed to stick to.

That brings us to the liner itself. According to Scientific American, Rhino Linings' Pipeliner 5000 was used in the Reflecting Pool. That's the same company that makes Rhino Liner for automotive use, but this is a polyurea coating often used in swimming pools. Some blame the hydrogen peroxide being dumped into the water to bring the algae under control (a problem scientists saw coming) for the liner's failure. However, even the many gallons of hydrogen peroxide being added are getting quite diluted in the large volume of water. It's not even strong enough to affect algae away from the edges of the pool where it's being dumped, so it's unlikely that it's the sole culprit in stripping the liner off the concrete.

The more likely reason is that the polyurea is simply not adhering to the surfaces it was applied to, possibly due to inadequate surface preparation. Like an automotive paint job, prep is vital to ensuring it sticks like it's supposed to. As Trump posted to Truth Social:

We were told it was going to take YEARS to do this job, and it will take a fraction of that time, at a fraction of the cost — and it will be much more beautiful than the day it was built!

It certainly hasn't taken a fraction of the cost, which has ballooned from its original $6.8 million estimate to $14.6 million. (That's not including what's being spent on algae mitigation, either.) Rather than the nearly two years the Obama Administration's renovation took, Atlantic Industrial Coatings is under enormous pressure to get the job done in a matter of weeks to finish in time for the America250 festivities. It's possible that in the rush, the surface of the Reflecting Pool floor wasn't prepared well enough for the polyurea to adhere correctly. Potential damage from the Presidential motorcade's joyride might have contributed to this as well. While most of the surface it drove over hadn't been painted yet, photos do show some vehicles parked on the painted area where the press conference took place. Polyurea is not designed to be driven over, which might have damaged it. There are other potential factors as well.

President Trump is blaming vandals for the damage, reports ABC News. (He may be correct, though not in the way he means it.) Some visitors, including former Olympian David Hearn, have even been arrested for merely touching the damaged liner. With algae obscuring the view, we won't really know what happened until the pool is drained for repairs. As a result, President Trump will finally be forced to drain the swamp as he's been promising to for the past ten years.