The treatment is the latest effort by the Interior Department to control algae blooms that have turned the pool bright green, despite an expensive renovation ordered by President Donald Trump to make it “American flag blue” in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary. Warmer temperatures and climate change are among the risk factors that could exacerbate this outbreak.
The Trump administration spent more than $14 million to update pools ahead of ceremonies across the US capital. The work was done under a no-bid contract by a company that has never worked for the federal government. (However, according to The New York Times, it has worked on President Donald Trump’s golf course.)
Algae began forming less than a day after the updated pool was unveiled last week. An Interior Department spokesperson told CNN that the bloom was caused by “residual algae from supply lines that have been lying dormant for eight weeks.”
One of these issues appears to be water sources. Reflecting pools usually draw water from a nearby tidal basin, which is often filled with algae. During periods of high algae concentrations, the water supply is switched to municipal drinking water. The U.S. Department of the Interior did not immediately respond to WIRED’s questions about which water source is currently feeding the pool.
The second issue is of weather. High temperatures create “a perfect storm” for [algae] To bloom,” says Hans Paarl, a former professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina. Standing water makes the problem worse, Pearl says. ”Lakes and reservoirs around the world – they all have this problem this time of year.” Warmer than normal weather is expected in Washington, D.C., through the weekend, which could make controlling blooms more challenging.
Perl also points to another related factor, which is that the Trump administration has shown it is in no rush to solve climate change.
“It’s getting warmer now and these flowers are spreading globally—they’re moving to higher latitudes,” he says. “It’s clearly a temperature effect that allows them to optimize their growth.”
Beyond hydrogen peroxide, the Interior Department is “deploying high-tech nanobubble ozone technology” to keep algae away, an agency spokesperson told WIRED in an email.
Trump has praised the work on the pool, including painting it blue and fixing leaks, while also saying that the company the government hired would be able to make the repairs “in a very short period of time, for a very short amount of money.”
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