NEW YORK — The Trump administration will not seek new bids to repair the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday as he faced new questions about the troubled project and the taxpayer money involved.
Like President Trump, Burgum said he was 100% sure that vandals caused the damage to the century-old Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Trump has charged that a 350-foot gash was cut into the pool’s liner in the midst of recent renovations, while Burgum described it as multiple cuts adding up to that figure. He also said the pool would have to be at least partially drained in the coming week to finish the repairs.
The repairs will not be opened up to new contractors, he said.
“We’ll use the same company, because they did a fantastic job,” Burgum told CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”Thankfully, the vandalism was small. It was bad. I mean, it could cost tens of thousands of dollars to repair, so then it could fall into a felony … just like damaging any other government property could. But the job that was done to fix the Reflecting Pool was done extremely well.”
Trump this spring pledged to beautify the Reflecting Pool before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations. Water was drained and the president directed that the bottom be painted a color he called “American flag blue.” But after the site was restored, the water was plagued by an algae bloom for more than a week, and pieces of the new coating have appeared to be peeling off the bottom.
The pool was closed for the Independence Day celebration, but Burgum said that was due to a safety issue related to the fireworks.
The evolving debate over the Reflecting Pool has inflamed the broader fight over Trump’s aggressive push to overhaul Washington landmarks, including the White House, nearly two years into his final term in office.
Authorities have arrested more than a half dozen people related in relation to Reflecting Pool damage, including former Olympian David Hearn, who was indicted last week on a felony of property destruction.
The top federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro, said Hearn ripped up recently installed sealant on the pool in “a deliberate act” that caused more than $1,000 in damage. She accused him of “forcefully and violently” pulling up the bottom liner and acting belligerently toward an employee who told him to stop.
Hearn’s lawyers, Democracy Defenders Fund co-founder Norm Eisen and Mary Dohrmann, said the charges were “outrageous and should be alarming to every American.” Eisen and Dohrmann construed the case as representative of “the misuse of government power against an ordinary citizen based on a concocted narrative.”
Burgum was asked and did not answer directly whether there was photographic evidence of vandals cutting the pool’s liner. He was also asked whether Hearn should face a 10-year prison sentence, which is the maximum legal penalty for his charge.
“Just because you were a former something doesn’t exclude you from the law today,” Burgum told CNN. “The courts will decide.”
Meanwhile, questions loom over the no-bid contracts for the project that were awarded to vendors with prior ties to Trump.
Ohio-based Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, was given a $1.7-million contract to install a water-purification system in the Reflecting Pool, while Virginia-based Atlantic InAtlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded $14.7 million to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.
About 10 Democratic senators and House members are investigating the pool project.
“Taxpayers deserve a full explanation of how these failures occurred and who will be held accountable for correcting them,″ said a letter signed last month by six senators.
Burgum also appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”
Peoples writes for the Associated Press.
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