Trump’s Algae Problem Is a Lot Bigger Than the Reflecting Pool
Donald Trump dreamed of turning the Lincoln Reflecting Pool “American Flag Blue” in advance of celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. Instead, he got a pungent, bright green embarrassment. National Parks employees have yet to fully remove the algal bloom that sprang up after Trump’s ill-fated paint job, despite applying vacuums, hydrogen peroxide, and nanobubbles to the problem; the next step will be to drain the now-swampy basin for the second time this month and restore the blue sealant that has been floating to the surface in unsightly chunks. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Washington D.C.’s Department of Energy and the Environment was conducting an investigation into what killed the multiple ducks that have been found dead in the pool’s waters. It’s all a bit too on the nose. The tacky $16.4 million vanity project was carried out in part by giving a $1.7 million no-bid contract to a firm called (appropriately enough) Greenwater Services, which is owned by an already scandal-laden Trump loyalist, John J. Cafaro. On June 15, workers reported that one or two of the four algae-killing machines Greenwater used weren’t working at any given time. Trump has—without evidence—blamed the algae problem on “vandals,” alleging that anonymous hoodlums sabotaged the pool with knives and fertilizer; this does not seem to be true. Still, as of June 24, the Parks Police, National Guard, and U.S. Marshals have been patrolling the usually placid site. As of Tuesday, six arrests had been made. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed—also without evidence—that those detained included “longtime donors to the Democrat Party, to Barack Obama, to ActBlue.” Newly installed fencing around the pool is apparently meant to deter what Interior Department spokeswoman Katie Martin has called an “increase in vandalism by leftist activists.” Trump pledged to drain the metaphorical swamp. Instead, he’s created one.Algae, however, are much more than either smelly sludge or a tidy narrative device. While algae play several critical roles in freshwater and saltwater ecosystems, algal blooms like the one now bedeviling the Reflecting Pool are “a growing problem,” said marine biologist Gregory Dick. He’s the director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, or CIGLR, a partnership between the University of Michigan and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. “They’re becoming more frequent as water pollution becomes more of an issue, and they grow more in warming condition,” he explained. “The Reflecting Pool is not an exception.” The government’s newfound war on algae contrasts starkly with its repeated attempts to defund the experts who protect the public against harmful algal blooms not appearing on Washington, D.C., landmarks. The Trump administration’s cuts to research funding and federal agencies like NOAA have already undermined the federal government’s essential role in monitoring, responding to, and understanding harmful algal blooms. Deeper cuts outlined in next year’s federal budget would lower the public’s defenses against those blooms just as climate change helps them proliferate.Trump’s talk of vandals and knives notwithstanding, you don’t need conspiracy theories to explain how algal blooms happen. Experts suspect that the Reflecting Pool algal bloom began as a cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. Those generally grow thanks to abundant nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, warm temperatures, and calm waters. “The Reflecting Pool has those three ingredients,” Dick said. There’s no official definition for what constitutes a harmful algal bloom, and the one in the Reflecting Pool hasn’t received that designation. But they tend to give off a foul smell and are known to kill birds. Cyanobacteria produce a toxin called microcystin that can fatally poison animals and cause nausea, vomiting, and skin rashes in humans. A 2014 microcystin outbreak in Lake Erie left nearly half a million people in the greater Toledo area without running water for three days.An enormous amount of local, state, and federal resources are needed to keep the country’s waterways safe. NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab—which houses CIGLR—monitors and responds to algal blooms throughout the Great Lakes watershed, including Lake Erie. Researchers there use a range of technologies to keep tabs on algae in real time. Remote sensors let them track the distribution of harmful algal blooms. Buoys and remotely operated vehicles measure nutrient levels in the water, and scientists analyze physical samples to understand which species of algae are present at any given time and what environmental conditions cause them to give off certain toxins. If the scientists spot a potential threat, NOAA alerts municipal water treatment plants so that they can proactively safeguard the water sources that some 40 million people use to hydrate, cook, and shower. Algal blooms pose dangers not only to public and environmental health but to local economies that rely on revenue from tourism and fishing operations, which depend on the Great Lakes Lab to help determine when beaches should be closed down and which fish are safe to catch and sell. In spite of its crucial role in monitoring blooms, the lab lost roughly 40 percent of its staff last year. That was thanks to cuts imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency, which laid off newly hired and promoted staff and encourged federal employees to accept buyouts and retire early. The lab still hasn’t received all of the funds it was appropriated by Congress. The White House’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027 also includes an 18 percent cut to NOAA’s overall budget; it would completely eliminate funds for “Ocean, Coastal and Great Lakes Research.” Funding for the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies—the technical backbone of the National Hurricane Center, which houses researchers that forecast harmful algal blooms—is also at risk.Thankfully, these sorts of proposals tend to be aspirational. The budget Congress passed last year avoided the steepest cuts to NOAA outlined in the White House’s FY2026. So far, Project 2025’s authors in the Trump administration have not been able to follow through on their pledge to dismantle and privatize the agency. But those funds remain under constant threat. What was already a bare-bones team at the Great Lakes Environmental Lab, or GLERL, pre-DOGE has had to make do with a lot less.The reduced funding has already had some very concrete effects. Some of the Lab’s autonomous sample processors—which collect samples and measure water quality—“did not go out last year because of funding delays and lack of personnel,” Dick said. “Reduction in support and capacity for places like GLERL would have big impacts on boots-on-the-ground operations” he added, endangering researchers’ ability to provide up-to-date measurements and forecasting to (among many others) beach managers, drinking-water treatment facilities, and charter boat fishing captains. Dick worries too that continued cuts will hamper researchers’ ability to understand how algal blooms are responding to rising temperatures and climate-fueled extreme weather. Cyanobacteria thrive in warmer temperatures. Heavy storms can wash their favorite nutrients into the water, fueling algal growth. Lake Superior, for instance, was long thought to be “the coldest and cleanest of all the Great Lakes,” Dick said. In the 2010s, it suddenly started seeing substantial algal blooms, following a series of 500-year storms that washed off nutrients from the landscape. Lake Superior is also among the fastest-warming lakes on earth; over the past 30 years, summer surface water temperatures have increased by five degrees.Unlike Lake Superior, the Reflecting Pool has long hosted algae. As Washington’s summers become increasingly swamplike, eliminating the algae altogether may well prove impossible. As it has stretched out over the last several weeks, the Reflecting Pool debacle has been something of a microcosm for Trumpist governance, combining handouts to inexperienced loyalists with gaudy kitsch and baseless accusations against the left. It is also about as good a summary as any for the right’s approach to a climate crisis that’s fueling harmful algal blooms the world over: When it becomes impossible to keep denying a problem you helped cause, blame it on your political enemies and try to throw them in jail.