After vandals allegedly damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool soon after a $16 million renovation, Trump officials plan to use the same Virginia contractor that installed the failing liner earlier this summer. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the ins
By the time the water turned green with algae and the blue liner along the base peeled off in chunks earlier this summer, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation had already been put under a new kind of spotlight: suspicion.
President Donald Trump pointed to vandals in a Truth Social post. blaming those responsible for the troubles that followed the $16 million renovation. Federal officials, however, are not planning to restart the procurement process. The federal government will not seek a new company to repair the reflecting pool.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. who oversees national parks and whose agency is responsible for the landmark’s maintenance. told CNN that the company that installed the liner earlier this summer “did a fantastic job” and will also perform the repairs. No repair date has been announced. though questions have already been raised about timing: the Department of the Interior and the White House were asked when the pool would be drained and when repairs would begin.
The decision to reuse the contractor comes with lingering friction around how the liner was chosen in the first place. The Trump administration did not go through a competitive bidding process before hiring Atlantic Industrial Coatings of Virginia to install the liner. The liner project cost $14.7 million, and the liner began peeling shortly after it was unveiled to the public on June 6.
Burgum said in remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union” on July 5 that the liner failed because of vandalism and that the work itself was sound. “The job that was done to fix the Reflecting Pool was done extremely well, and hopefully we can move on,” he said.
In the administration’s account of what happened, the alleged damage was not a slow deterioration—it was an attack. Trump and his administration have said someone used a box cutter or similar tool to cut a gash in the pool’s liner. Burgum described the vandalism as limited, saying: “Thankfully, the vandalism was small.”.
But the federal government’s own numbers suggest the consequences are still real. Burgum acknowledged that even a “small” incident could be expensive, telling CNN that it could cost “tens of thousands of dollars to repair.”
Investigators have also pinned down the physical theory of the damage. Burgum said the liner failed because of vandalism, and Trump and his administration have said the gash was cut with a box cutter or similar tool. The reflecting pool is roughly the length of six football fields.
A National Parks Service official said in a court document that the liner was cut using a “sharp knife or razor,” though the document did not explain how the government reached that conclusion.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, for its part, told the public that it expected to fix the problem under warranty. On June 21, the company wrote on its website that it would make repairs as soon as possible under the warranty. It said the affected areas were “a very small part of the massive 7 acre project. ” and “do not indicate a failure of the liner. ” according to the statement.
Still, the investigation into suspected vandalism is moving through the justice system. The Trump administration has not named a suspect publicly.
On July 2, a federal grand jury indicted a 67-year-old man, David Hearn, on charges of felony vandalism. Hearn told The Washington Post that he reached into the reflecting pool to grab a piece of “flapping” material.
Law enforcement has also tried to connect the alleged act to imagery. On June 24, the U.S. Park Police, part of the National Park Service, released photos and video of an unidentified person who does not match Hearn’s appearance briefly reaching into the pool.
The sequence of events—an $16 million renovation. a $14.7 million liner installation chosen without competitive bidding. peeling that began soon after the June 6 unveiling. and a warranty repair path that officials plan to follow—leaves a central question hanging over the coming days: whether the next phase of work can be completed fast enough to restore public confidence while investigators keep pushing the vandalism case forward.
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Doug Burgum Atlantic Industrial Coatings vandalism David Hearn federal grand jury National Park Service U.S. Park Police Truth Social liner repair