Balgarianovinite.com
The algae and peeling paint plaguing President Donald Trump’s $14 million renovation project at the Reflecting Pool have gotten to the point where tourists are stopping by and “tearing off pieces” of the paint to bring home as souvenirs, CNN reported.
Anchor Omar Jimenez introduced the report from correspondent Tom Foreman on Friday’s episode of CNN News Central, commenting that crews were “still trying to remove all that algae from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,” but now they were having to deal with “new problems, including parts of the pool’s floor now appear to be peeling off,” showing video of “flaps of blue material” that were “floating in the water.”
Photos and video of the bright green algae, government workers’ attempts to clear it with hydrogen peroxide, and then the paint seeming to peel (which may have been caused or exacerbated by the hydrogen peroxide) have been going viral on social media this week.
It was not clear if it was sealant or paint, Jimenez said, pointing out the “flaps of blue material” floating in the water and asking Foreman for an update on how the crew’s work was progressing to tackle the algae and paint issues.
“Tom, what are you seeing?” asked Jimenez. “Are crews out making any progress? I feel like you got your sleeves rolled up. Have you been putting your hands in there too?”
Foreman said he had been “very careful here not to pull at this because we don’t want to, you know, make anything worse,” and pointed out a loose flap of the paint or sealant in the water.
“There have been tourists coming along, tearing off pieces to take as souvenirs,” said Foreman. “Now, did they cause this problem? I don’t know, maybe. Did they exacerbate it? Maybe. And we don’t have proof, exactly that that is the sealant we’re talking about. But it sure looks like it.”
As far as the algae cleanup was going, Foreman said the crews “are working very hard and it is very slow,” and they were now “pumping oxygen into the water in a form of ozone to try to break up the chemical process that forms these algae blooms, very commonly this time of year in Washington, D.C., and they’re using these sort of water vacuums out here — hydro vacuums to suck up a lot of the green algae.”
“We don’t know — it could be forming again behind them,” he continued, “because it’s basically microscopic, in spore form.”
“What we do know is that all the tourists who are coming by are seeing a lot of it,” he said, cuing up video clips of tourists reacting to the “green, green slime,” saying it looked “bad,” and they “feel for the ducks.”
Foreman also showed the output hose pouring into a drain that was “clearly green,” despite federal officials claiming the water was “absolutely clear” and “perfect.”
“It very clearly is not,” said Foreman. “It takes no walking around at all here to see all the debris in the water, the continued presence of algae.”
“Can they get it under control?” said Foreman. “Maybe they can, but currently they do not have it under control. And whether they can get it done by July 4th, we’ll see.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
The post Art of the Peel: Tourists Are ‘Tearing Off Pieces’ of the Reflecting Pool’s Peeling Paint to ‘Take as Souvenirs’ first appeared on Mediaite.
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