Workers racing to turn reflecting pool blue for Trump may be at risk, union warns [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Sun 17 May 2026 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 17 May 2026 21.30 EDT
Workers renovating one of Washington DC’s most historically symbolic sites in a project ordered by Donald Trump may be risking their safety as they race to finish on time for the US’s 250th anniversary celebrations, a union monitoring the site has warned. Trade union scrutiny has focused on the reflecting pool on the US capital’s National Mall – scene of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream speech” – after it was drained of water and fenced off from the public to allow contractors the chance to upgrade it by 4 July.
The pool, a Washington landmark since it was dug in 1922, is currently the site of frenetic repair activity, its usual watery surface occupied instead by vehicle and work equipment. Tourists visiting the area have found their view obscured by black tarpaulin. Leaks and algae blooms have for decades dogged the 2,000ft pool, which sits between the Lincoln and George Washington memorial monuments, turning its water green and confounding previous expensive government-commissioned repair schemes, including one commissioned by Barack Obama’s administration.
Last month, the Trump administration – vowing to solve the problem once and for all – awarded a no-bid contract to waterproof and repaint the pool to a Virginia-based company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings. The president told journalists the company had successfully carried out work on a swimming pool at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia. In a patriotic flourish, he ordered the firm to repaint the pool’s floor “American flag blue”.
Other companies that do similar work have expressed indignation over being denied the chance to compete for the contract, according to Herbert Zaldivar, the business development director of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, who has visited the site as an observer. Now the award is threatening to boomerang amid disclosures that Trump drastically understated the contract’s cost, and reports that officials at the Department of the Interior – which has responsibility for the site – are dissatisfied with the company’s work.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/17/trump-washington-dc-reflecting-pool
Since they are apparently fucking this up less than 2 months before July 4th, they may have to do a supplemental contact with incentives, to get it finished on time.
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