In Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey dreams of leaving Skid Row, and living in a little house “somewhere that’s green”. I would suggest that she pitch her tent next to the Reflecting Pool just to the east from the Lincoln Memoral, on the grass, under the trees, and next to the water, all three being green.

As you probably know, the Trump administration has spent $16,000,000 on “improvements” to the Reflecting Pool, including a new filtration system, and the repainting of the gray bottom of the pool a shade the president calls American Flag Blue. The idea was to change the color of the water to a cleaner looking color, a refreshing blue. No longer a hard to describe color, made harder to describe by omnipresent algae, but a color that is beautiful.

So far, it has been a failure. Whether the color of the bottom paint will ever influence the visible color of the water, I don’t know. It certainly hasn’t made a difference yet. And the reason it seems hard to tell about the future is that the green algae which the old filtration system let remain seems to be equally happy with the new filtration system.

I know this because we went down to look at the Reflecting Pool yesterday afternoon. The algae was visible up close, and gave the water a greenish tint when viewed from afar. Here are a few photos.

Not that the Park Service is just sitting idly by. They have apparently first tried to solve the problem using a nanobubble ozone treatment. But that, at least by itself, did not do the trick, so they are now pouring in hydrogen peroxide. Yes, a bleach, just like what Trump thought would probably choke off Covid-19. Here are the hard at work NPS employees.

Another question was whether or not the pool would still reflect. It does seem to, although the reflection is damaged by the condition of the water.

So, perhaps this was one more example of Trump’s ways to waste money. Or perhaps a cure will be found for the algae. But even if the algae is gone, my guess is that the pool will still not look like an Alpine lake.

But guess what? Nobody will care. It will be fine as-is. The Lincoln Memorial and the surrounding grounds are what counts. Not the color of the water.

Of more concern is what will happen on the other side of the Memorial, where Emperor Trump wants to build his 250′ arch.