Reflecting Pool liner failed in 85 places, inspection finds
The new blue skin inside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. failed in 85 places.
That is far more damage than previously reported, according to a 75-page "failure analysis" — a technical review of what went wrong — detailed by The Washington Post. ARTnews reported on 15 October that the repair work failed far worse than was previously known.
The analysis was written by Atlantic Coating, the coatings firm involved in the work. It blames errors in the renovation itself for the failures. It makes no mention of vandalism.
That finding rewrites the first explanation for the damage. Peeling appeared just two weeks after a US$14 million project to reline the pool. Independent experts told the Post in July that the peeling was probably caused by application flaws — problems with how the liner, the waterproof membrane laid inside the pool, was put down.
President Donald Trump had blamed vandals. The alleged vandalism was described as a 300-foot slit made with a "box cutter or a knife", as reported by the public broadcaster PBS in the United States in June.
The contractor has since broken with that account. It said the new blue liner peeled and tore on its own, and blamed its own repairs — not vandals — for the failure, according to The New York Times. The government dropped charges against people accused of damaging the pool. That includes vandalism charges against a person named Hearn, which were dropped.
The pool is the long, shallow mirror of water between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It is familiar worldwide from films, protests and tourist photographs.
The National Park Service in the United States, which cares for the site, said about 30 feet of the pool would be drained starting 8 September to allow for removal and reconstruction work. Its National Mall and Memorial Parks unit carried out temporary closures to support the lining and repair, according to a notice dated 19 May.
Draining the pool for work is not new. The Park Service has emptied it before for cleaning, saying in past notices that full draining could take several days before crews could start.
What makes this stand out is the paper trail. A celebrated public space, a fresh US$14 million fix, a vandalism claim, dropped charges — and now an inspection report that points to the job itself, in 85 places.
