Algae and peeling paint muddy Trump's pool vision

One of President Donald Trump's pet beauty projects for Washington was supposed to make the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool look blue, like part of the US flag.

Enter Mother Nature. Algae have proliferated in the water, turning it a swampy green.

"Can you see it in my photos? Oh well, I'll just use a filter to hide the algae," said Farrah Lu, a 43-year-old tourist from China.

The invasion comes just days after the completion of the pool repainting project, part of Trump's drive to put his stamp on Washington with things like a ballroom at the White House and a huge arch by the Potomac River.

Under Trump's orders the long, rectangular pool, designed to capture reflections of the Washington Monument on the National Mall, was drained and painted in what he calls "American flag blue."

Adding to the project's woes are apparent issues with peeling paint: an AFP photographer on Friday saw that bits of blue paint were being pumped out of the pool by workers, along with green algae.

The problems with the peeling paint appear widespread across the 610-meter-long pool. The ongoing issue has been documented by news media and others on social media in the past few days.

Blue paint is peeling off the bottom of the pool, just days after it was applied. Photo: AFP

In one place, someone had traced the word "TRUMP" into the green scum on the bottom of the pool, where the blue paint is patchy.

In a post Friday to his Truth Social platform, Trump attributed the issues to "vandalism."

"The algae is 75% gone, and the condition will soon be completely remedied, and the area that was vandalized, fortunately, is just a small area of damage, and will be fixed early next week," he said, adding that law enforcement was "actively investigating" the situation.

This is hallowed Washington real estate: it was from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famed "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963 to several hundred thousand people gathered below around the pool.

Alas, hot weather this past weekend apparently caused an algae bloom in the pool.

"When I thought reflecting pool, I would see some reflection of the monument on the pool. That's what the name says, so that didn't meet my expectation," said Ravi Desai, visiting from Australia. "But overall I still find it very beautiful. And we're just tourists here."

The National Park Service said it is using pumps to treat the water with what it called nanobubble ozone technology to kill the algae, along with hydrogen peroxide, which it said is milder than chlorine.

The pool project has faced scrutiny over its multimillion-dollar cost and the process by which the contract was awarded -- a no-competition deal favouring a company that had already done work for Trump at one of his golf clubs.

Nicole Leguillow, a 66-year-old resident of neighbouring Virginia, said she was not disappointed by the pool, saying algae will be algae. But she complained the funds spent on this Trump endeavour were "definitely not worth it."

"That money could have been spent much more wisely on things people in this country need," Leguillow said.