The New York Times identified dozens of areas throughout the newly installed liner of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that showed signs of bubbles, tears or peeling.
President Trump has for weeks blamed vandals for the damage that appeared at the Reflecting Pool shortly after its $16.4 million renovation was completed. But federal prosecutors said last week that contractors hired by the Trump administration had actually “botched” the project as they rushed to complete it ahead of Fourth of July celebrations.
Many of the visible defects appeared on or near the expansion joints that run along the sides of the pool and perpendicularly across its interior, separating the large concrete slabs that make up the pool’s basin. Some peeling was far from the edge of the pool and most likely out of reach for anyone trying to vandalize it.
The expansion joints allow the concrete slabs to expand and shrink with temperature fluctuations, so the sealant used there must be flexible while remaining watertight. That engineering challenge has been difficult to solve in the past — the seals have repeatedly failed and leaked — and it was one of the main functional issues that the Trump administration had set out to fix with its latest renovation.
The pool has been sealed off with a six-foot-tall fence and access has been limited since it was drained for repairs in mid-July. The Times mapped the damage by capturing high-resolution photographs from multiple distant viewpoints, including from the southern side of the pool, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the top of the Washington Monument. Certain areas of the pool were obscured by the limited sightline or were difficult to see clearly.
Bulging on top of expansion joints
The photographs showed that the new liner the contractors installed had bulged or tented up in areas where it had been applied on top of the expansion joints in the interior of the pool.
The exact cause for the bulging in the liner is unclear, although the effect is present in photographs taken during the installation process, before the renovation was completed.
Near interior expansion joints
The Times found evidence of flaws in the liner near the interior expansion joints in the photographs taken after the pool was drained for repairs.
Robert Iezzi, a materials scientist who studies paint and coatings, said the designers of the pool’s repair job had taken a significant risk by applying the lining across a gap that would shrink and grow. As the concrete slabs moved, he said, they would pull and push the strip of lining that linked them.
Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said in an email that the expansion joints have a “top coating layer that is soft, flexible, and easily cut by a box cutter.” She did not address other questions related to the tenting of the liner at the joints.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor hired by the Interior Department to repair, resurface and paint the pool, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Along the edges of the pool
The Times also identified flaws in the liner along the expansion joints in the sides of the pool.
Court documents suggested that application error most likely caused coating failures there. Shortly after the installation was completed, a National Park Service engineer raised concerns about a small section on the edge of the pool where the top layer of the liner had peeled, according to the documents.
The engineer wrote in an email to other employees at the Park Service and the Interior Department that the contractor’s explanation for the peeling was “overspray” — spraying over coating that had already dried and cured. This might result in a one- to two-foot strip of the liner being vulnerable to peeling, he wrote.
Between the expansion joints
The Times found other areas between the expansion joints where the coating seemed to fail.
Court documents depicted a “rushed and flawed” installation process that was also disrupted by weather delays. Heavy rainfall on multiple occasions paused work, and in one case required that rainwater be pumped out of the pool so that the surface could dry, the documents said.
Posts on X by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum indicated that the contractors were still working out a solution for sealing the expansion joints in mid-May, even as the rest of the pool’s surface was being treated and painted.
Methodology
To map the visible damage to the Reflecting Pool, Times journalists photographed the pool from multiple angles, stitched the photos and then overlaid them on a 3-D model of the pool. This allowed them to geolocate the areas with visible damage. The margin of error in the geolocation is about one foot near the west end of the pool, and about three feet near the east end.
Photographs were taken more than a week after the pool was drained. Inspectors surveyed the pool during that period and in some cases pulled up large pieces of the liner for closer inspection. It is unclear whether the photographs reflect the initial state of the damage or if the inspectors further disturbed the liner during their assessment.
