Meridian Hill Park’s iconic cascading fountain turned a thick, opaque brown this week, just months after the National Park Service completed a full restoration.
President Donald Trump had previously bragged about spending $16 million to renovate the site, also known as the Malcolm X Park
The water’s discoloration occurred only six days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a ceremony at the fountain celebrating Trump’s work, according to reports by City Cast DC.
The National Park Service blamed sediment flushed from pipes that had been out of service for years. According to a D.C. photographer, crews testing two upper fountains not included in the original repair contract inadvertently caused accumulated sediment and rust from old lines to flow into the cascading fountain.
The incident echoes recent troubles at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where a multimillion-dollar Trump-ordered renovation to paint the bottom “American flag blue” resulted in green algae blooms and peeling paint, as reported by NPR.
The National Park Service expects water clarity to return within 24 to 36 hours.
“I think it’s pretty nasty,” one visitor told Newsweek’s White House reporter Leonardo Feldman.
“I was literally here yesterday, and it looked pretty good.”
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