After weeks of repairs, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is reflecting again.
The century-old landmark has been slowly refilled over the past few days, after the completion of a $14.2 million project in which workers coated its concrete floor with a dark-blue-tinted waterproofing material.
When New York Times photographers visited the site on Monday, water had filled the pool’s center — where it is deepest — and reached nearly to the sides.
The still, shallow pool mirrored the Washington Monument clearly, as it was designed to do.
President Trump celebrated the pool’s restoration in a social media post, thanking himself for making it possible.
“It was originally opened in 1922, but never functioned properly — now it does!” Mr. Trump wrote on Saturday. “Thank you President Trump.”
But the Reflecting Pool has been here before. The pool has had several major overhauls before this one, including a repair job by the Obama administration that cost more than $35 million.
It generally looks good afterward — at least, for a while.
Alas, its longtime problems — leaks and algae blooms — have thus far always returned.
Mr. Trump is spending tens of millions to repair landmarks around Washington in advance of the nation’s 250th birthday next month. To repair the Reflecting Pool, the Trump administration bypassed normal procedures and awarded a no-bid contract directly to a Virginia company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.
Mr. Trump initially said he had personally chosen the company because it had worked on the swimming pool at his golf club in Sterling, Va. Mr. Trump also said that the work would cost $1.8 million.
In reality, the project cost more than seven times that figure — in part because the government agreed to pay the contractor a 20 percent profit margin, despite a National Park Service analysis that found that margin “inflated.” Mr. Trump also later reversed himself and said he did not know the contractor.
At first, the contractor seemed to struggle with a crucial task. Its method for sealing the leak-prone joints between the pool’s concrete slabs failed at least two trials, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times. But, after consulting the Army Corps of Engineers, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the contractor had found a solution that worked.
The project was originally set to be finished on May 22, but Mr. Trump later pushed that back, saying the pool would be finished by July 4. A spokeswoman for the Interior Department did not respond to a question asking when the pool would be filled completely.
Now comes the real test. Will the pool’s seals hold when the concrete slabs contract and expand with temperature changes? Will algae blooms return when the pool bakes under Washington’s summer sun? (The pool was already dotted with clumps of green algae on Wednesday, but the Interior Department said that was only residual algae being flushed out of its pipes after eight weeks of sitting idle. The agency said it would be gone soon.)
People familiar with the pool said they worried that the Trump administration had not repaired a critical, but hidden, piece of the Reflecting Pool’s infrastructure. Underneath the National Mall, there are buried pipes that bring the pool’s water to and from a nearby filtration plant.
Those pipes often leak, cutting the pool off from its filters. The Interior Department says it plans to repair them in the fall. Without them, there is a chance that today’s beautiful pool will turn a familiar shade of green.
