A park that President Donald Trump bragged that he had “renovated” for $16 million suddenly had its water turn a murky brown this week, the latest in a string of his D.C. beautification “disasters.”
Meridian Hill Park — also known as Malcolm X Park — saw its iconic cascading fountain go from sparkling blue to a thick, opaque brown by Tuesday, just months after the National Park Service completed a full restoration.
The agency blamed sediment flushed from pipes that had been out of service for years.
It was only six days ago that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a ceremony at the very same fountain to celebrate Trump’s work.
“You ensure that our capital is safe and secure,” Hegseth told National Guard members assembled at the park, according to NBC Washington.
“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.”
“It was clear. It was beautiful,” another visitor said. “Now it’s brown. It’s murky. There’s no accountability.”
Progressive commentator John Aravosis wrote on X that visiting the park felt like watching “another reflecting pool disaster in Washington, D.C.”
“This entire cascade of water has been destroyed,” Aravosis said in a video. “Bright orange, disgusting, cascading all the way down.”
Freelance D.C. photographer Andrew Leyden posted on X that the National Park Service had been testing two upper fountains not included in the original repair contract, and when crews turned them on, accumulated sediment and rust in those old lines flowed into the cascading fountain below.
The White House had called the restored park an “emblem of rebirth” — a sign of “rekindling national pride” and “a rejection of mediocrity.”
Just last month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “almost all of the Statues, Monuments, and Fountains have been completely renovated and restored, and are in… perfect shape.”
The Meridian Hill mess follows a run of trouble at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where a multimillion-dollar renovation — ordered by Trump to paint the bottom “American flag blue” — quickly became plagued by a green algae bloom and peeling paint, National Public Radio reported.
Back at Meridian Hill, not every visitor was ready to give up on the project.
“I’m happy that it’s even open for us,” one woman told Feldman.
Another, who said she had traveled from California, added: “We knew he fixed this, and we made an effort to come and see his efforts.”
The National Park Service says it expects the water to run clean within 24 to 36 hours.
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