The mystery of who damaged President Donald Trump’s newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool appears to have an answer: the people who renovated it.
The contractor behind the $14.7 million projece concluded that problems with its own work and the renovation plan caused the pool’s new blue liner to blister and peel, according to government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings found problems with both the design and execution of the project, which was fast-tracked ahead of July Fourth celebrations.
Workers failed to apply enough primer in some areas, preventing layers of the liner from bonding properly. But an even larger problem involved the materials themselves: Two chemicals used in the liner were incompatible, causing the upper layer to become hot enough to damage the material beneath it.
The result was bubbling, blistering and peeling that appeared just weeks after the renovation was completed.
Trump repeatedly blamed vandals.
The president claimed people had entered the pool with knives or box cutters to deliberately slice the new “American flag blue” liner. Federal prosecutors initially charged several people with damaging the landmark.
Those cases fell apart.
The Justice Department dropped charges in July after prosecutors learned that problems with the renovation, rather than vandalism, were responsible for the damage.
Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.
The newly disclosed contractor reports offer the clearest explanation yet for what went wrong Meanwhile, the Interior Department has continued to maintain that vandalism occurred and said the contractor is responsible for repairing the liner.
The Reflecting Pool had already experienced problems almost immediately after the rushed renovation. Shortly after reopening, the water turned green with algae. Portions of the new liner then began peeling away, prompting repairs and eventually the vandalism investigation.
Now, the company hired to renovate the landmark has acknowledged that the biggest problem came from the renovation itself.
Read more
about Trump’s disastrous renovation of the Reflecting Pool
