Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s renovations of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool despite its being plagued by peeling paint and algae, saying it has been a “big success.”
Renovations to the Reflecting Pool began in April, and have cost more than $16 million, $4 million more than the original no-bid contract. The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the project that was a made a priority for repairs ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration this weekend.
Renovations to the Reflecting Pool began in April, and have cost more than $16 million, $4 million more than the original no-bid contracted. The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the project.
“It’s no longer leaking 45,000 gallons a day, and we’ve got, you know, less than one-tenth of 1% of that industrial liner that’s been damaged, and that’s the only thing that remains to go back and fix the damage done by the vandals,” Burgum told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
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Burgum, who is overseeing the project, said that the initial renovation was done for a “fraction of the cost” as past projects, and that additional fixes to the pool’s lining will not cost much more.
“I think it’s going to be a small number, because the majority of the work was related to the labor and the materials for the liner, and of course, the new nanobubbler system,” Burgum said, referring to technology that is intended to get rid of the algae.
“So the Reflecting Pool has been a big success,” Burgum added. “And we’ve got 340 million people in this country that are celebrating 250. We did have a few vandals, but all that’s going to be repairable, and that’ll all be fixed in the coming weeks as we go forward.”
Trump has blamed vandals for ripping a 350-foot gash in the liner at the bottom of the pool, saying that people cut it with a “knife or box-cutter.” Burgum backed those claims and said more cameras have been installed at the Reflecting Pool as a result.
“It’s multiple gashes that add up to 350 feet across that, and so, and again, some of this happened early on. There was a — where we installed more cameras. I mean, we weren’t expecting that we were going to have a small group of people that wanted to try to destroy effectively what is part of the Lincoln Memorial.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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