After weeks of repairs, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is reflecting again.<\/p>\n
The century-old landmark has been slowly refilled over the past few days, after the completion of a $14.2 million project<\/a> in which workers coated its concrete floor with a dark-blue-tinted waterproofing material.<\/p>\n When New York Times photographers visited the site on Monday, water had filled the pool\u2019s center \u2014 where it is deepest \u2014 and reached nearly to the sides.<\/p>\n The still, shallow pool mirrored the Washington Monument clearly, as it was designed to do.<\/p>\n President Trump celebrated the pool\u2019s restoration in a social media post, thanking himself for making it possible.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was originally opened in 1922, but never functioned properly \u2014 now it does!\u201d Mr. Trump wrote on Saturday<\/a>. \u201cThank you President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It generally looks good afterward \u2014 at least, for a while.<\/p>\n Alas, its longtime problems \u2014 leaks and algae blooms \u2014 have thus far always returned.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump is spending tens of millions<\/a> to repair landmarks around Washington in advance of the nation\u2019s 250th birthday next month. To repair the Reflecting Pool, the Trump administration bypassed normal procedures and awarded a no-bid contract<\/a> directly to a Virginia company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump initially said<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n In reality, the project cost more than seven times that figure \u2014 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 \u201cinflated<\/a>.\u201d Mr. Trump also later reversed himself and said he did not know the contractor.<\/p>\n