I have become fascinated, for both technical and political reasons, with the saga over the Lincoln Reflecting Pool. That the original attempt to paint the pool blue was botched is now well established with even Trump lackey Jeanine Pirro conceding it. Trump will continue to claim that it was vandalized (even if he knows that the claim is false) but only his most deluded cult members will believe it. Pirro is pointing the finger at the Department of the Interior for not providing them with all the information thus requiring her to withdraw the prosecutions of the four alleged vandals, although it makes her look utterly incompetent in rushing to indict without having the facts. The Secretary of the Interior Doug Burghum is angrily pushing back.
Here is a review of the timeline of the pool renovations, including when Trump’s motorcade actually drove into the drained pool during the renovation. It is not clear if he drove over sections that had been painted (which would make him one of his alleged vandals) or the part that was still bare.
We tend to think that a solution will eventually be found, possibly at a high cost, because we have faith in the power of technological innovation to solve practical problems. But what if that faith is unfounded in this case? What then?
I am by no means a pool expert but it struck me that this may be a problem that might never be solved. Painting the base of such a long pool is not just a question of scaling up what you do to an ordinary swimming pool but comes with enormous additional technical problems that may well prove to be insurmountable. This may be because it was never a question of simply painting the grey concrete base (because ordinary paint will peel off very fast) but putting a plastic-type colored coating on the concrete. That is possible for a relatively small surface like porches. But for larger surfaces, it can only be done in sections and that requires the coating in different areas to bond together to form a tight seal and that seems to be the problem here. It can be done for smaller areas but this is so large that the separate segments did not bond and so started peeling apart. Trump’s claim that someone cut a slit hundreds of feet long was always preposterous but the kind of separation that we saw was likely due to the separating of the segments.
My suspicion is that the pool is never going to be what Trump envisaged, an algae-free, deep blue color. There will be a never-ending series of attempts to rectify that problem, each of which will fail, thus becoming a permanent embarrassment to Trump. The fencing around it will remain, making what was once a popular tourist attraction, one that I have visited many times, into an eyesore and more like a crime scene.
The only real solution might be to scrap the whole idea and take the pool back to its old concrete base. But Trump will never accept such a humiliation so the pool may stay in a state of limbo until he leaves office, a highly visible symbol of his incompetence.
At the beginning, the administration contacted the contractor that had made previous maintenance. They passed, saying it was not possible to do in the time frame.
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Being the Trump administration, they just moved on to an inexperienced contractor that agreed to do the job..
Maybe -if the original contractor is hired to do the job without time pressure -- they might pull it off. But it is obviously not certain.
Given the competence of this administration, I think it’s just as likely that the pool will be rendered toxic and the area around it uninhabitable for the next 100 years as it is to be fixed.
I have read somewhere that the coating requires a very time consuming and labor intensive process to prepare the surface of the joint when painting a new section since you can’t do the whole thing in a single application. And failure to go through this process will guarantee that the joint will fail and peel. Of course this process was not followed with the result anyone can see. And it probably never will be done correctly by anyone hired by Trump or his administration.
This is a concrete (pun intended) example of what Trump has done to the US government and its institutions as well as its standing in the world. Trump is the vandal he’s looking for (as always, he’s the thing he accuses others to be). But unlike the reflecting pool which is relatively minor and could be fixed relatively quickly by someone competent, the rest of the US situation (which will get worse as long a Trump is in charge both because of him or because of the people behind the scene) will not be quickly and easily fixed. This is a generational event that will be felt for a long time both in the US and elsewhere. If anyone thinks that things will go back to normal once someone sane is in charge they are delusional. People need to prepare for the aftermath; a lot of work will be needed to even start a return to something good.
TACO works well as an acronym. But what we really need is one for “everything the orange turd touches turns to shit.” Plans by Orange Turd Always Turn to Ordure?
@4 The acronym that has long been in use is ETTD (Everything Trump Touches Dies). “Dies” can be used both literally and metaphorically, depending on what thing he’s just fucked up.
Thanks Ridana, didn’t know that one.
absolute ETTD. Trump has so far destroyed the White House east wing, the reflecting pool, the White House south lawn, is working on Lafayette Park, and who knows what’s next. This man has no respect for anything that came before.
There is a simple solution: mix the pigment into the concrete. If a chip falls off, you won’t notice it, because the colour stays the same.
There is no need for the pool to be water sealed. It’s only a landscape feature, not a drinking water reservoir.
There’s probably a reason why it’s a bad idea, but you could dissolve copper sulfate in the water to both turn it blue and kill off the algae.
ETTD, plus POTATO for ease if remembering!
BTW doing things a different way means admitting a mistake. Roy Cohn was the teacher of the young Trump and taught him to never admit a mistake.
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(BTW what is the word for teacher/elderly advisor/senpai in english ?)
@10 birgerjohansson Perhaps ‘Mentor’
Trump clearly has it in for the 1st and best Republican president:
* He used the Lincoln Memorial as a changing room for his brutal fight show on the White House grounds.
* He turned the Lincoln Reflecting Pool into a personalized metaphor for the DC Swamp.
• He ceased production of the Lincoln penny.
• He’s completed the ruination of Lincoln’s political party.
• He’s overworked and undersupplied the aircraft carrier named after the 16th president.
Will he next paint a mustache on the Oval Office bust of Lincoln, declare Carl Sandburg’s famous biography “fake news”, replace the portraiture on the $5 bill, or rescind the Emancipation Proclamation?
ETTD, and now he’s touched the MMR vaccine. He’s fucking insane.
They could leave the pool dry and clean, and assure Trump that he personally had commanded the waves to retreat the likes of which no-one has ever seen.
Alternatively, take that clean and dry pool, waft some mist across the top, and assure Trump that it was
clothedfilled with a new kind of water, impossibly light and delicate, far too delicate for any but he to appreciate in its beauty and gossamer-like apppearance. Those who refuse to applaud his greatness and see it for the ultra-light water that it is are just fake news.(Small boys will not be allowed to comment on the Emporor’s New Water, obviously.)
The coating that was applied is not paint, it’s a polymer epoxy with very specific requirements as to surface preparation, curing times, and time between applying the various layers.
The first contractor very correctly refused the job because the timeframe for completion was inadequate.
Driving on the new surface was not a good idea, but the delamination is most likely due to inadequate surface preparation and resulting bonding failure. Dumping in hydrogen peroxide to kill algae accelerated the process of removing the new coating.
The algae bloom is exactly what one would expect in a newly filled pond, but was exacerbated by refilling it with the phosphate enriched public water supply, rather than using water from the tidal basin as per standard operating procedure of the Park Service.
In short, it was doomed by incompetence and blatant grift before the work began.
Pierce R. Butler@12,
Blow up Lincoln’s image on Mount Rushmore, or demand that it be recarved to resemble him (or rather, his self-image)?