By Sam Turge, Senior Political Correspondent, IRREVERENT Magazine
Reporting live from the National Mall, Washington, D.C., approximately twelve feet from the water
The Reflecting Pool smells like a lake that has decided to stop trying. There is no sound of water against the concrete edge. I recognized the smell.
I am standing at the edge of it — the western end, near the Lincoln Memorial steps, where Abraham Lincoln's stone face surveys the longest stretch of ceremonial water in the American republic — and I want you to understand that this is not metaphor. The water is green. Not a tasteful sage or a dignified teal. A green that a child would call "gross." A green that a microbiologist would call Microcystis aeruginosa. A green that I, a trained political journalist with twenty-two years of field experience, am calling "Capitol Grand bathroom grout." I upgraded to a four-star property for this assignment.
The Capitol Grand bills itself as a four-star property. It has a lobby with a waterfall feature. The waterfall feature was not running when I checked in. The basin contained a yellow safety cone. The woman at the front desk told me it was "being addressed." I noted this with journalistic precision. I am noting the Reflecting Pool with the same.
The National Mall's Reflecting Pool is 2,028 feet long, 167 feet wide, and, as of this morning, approximately eighteen inches deep in whatever this is. The National Park Service has been fighting the algae since late spring. A spokesman I contacted by phone before coming on-site told me the situation was "a seasonal challenge." He did not return my follow-up call.
On-site, I found Ranger D. Purcell, a stout man in the beige-and-green uniform of the NPS who appeared, when I approached, to be watching the water with the expression of a man whose problem will not leave.
"We have protocols," Ranger Purcell said.
I asked him what the protocols were.
"We're working through them," he said.
I asked him about the broken pipes, which three independent sources and my own eyes had confirmed were part of the pool's ongoing infrastructure situation.
"The pipes," he said, and looked at the water.
"Yes," I said.
"We're working through those too," he said.
He excused himself to help a family take a photograph. The photograph, I noted, would look like they were standing in front of a very large lawn. They were smiling.
Not everyone on-site shared Ranger Purcell's measured despair.
Twenty feet to my left, Hein Dekker, 54, of Rotterdam, Netherlands, was crouched at the pool's edge with a mirrorless camera, documenting what he described to me as "a very bold statement about renewal."
"The green," he said, gesturing expansively. "It is defiant. Like America is saying, I will not be the blue pool anymore."
I asked him if he knew this was a malfunction rather than an installation.
He looked at the water. He looked at me. He looked at the water again.
"Sometimes," he said, "the error is the art."
He took three more photographs. I wrote this down.
At the eastern end of the pool, near the Washington Monument, I intercepted Tyler Moss, 28, listed on his business card as Deputy Associate Director of Strategic Communications, Office of the Press Secretary. He was on the phone. He hung up when I approached.
"The pool situation," Tyler told me, "is something the administration is actively monitoring."
I asked him what monitoring meant in practical terms.
"We're in close coordination with the National Park Service," he said.
I told him I had just come from Ranger Purcell.
"Right," he said. "They're great. They're doing great work."
I asked him if there was a timeline for repairs.
"I don't want to get ahead of any announcements," he said.
He put his phone in his pocket and then took it out again.
My most useful interview was with Gerald Fitch, 71, of Bethesda, Maryland, a retired facilities manager who spent thirty-one years with the General Services Administration overseeing federal building maintenance. He found me. I was eating a granola bar near a bench.
"You a reporter?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
He sat down.
For the next twenty-three minutes, Gerald Fitch explained to me in granular, passionate, uninterruptible detail the consequences of decades of deferred federal infrastructure maintenance. He discussed the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act. He had opinions about underground pipe corrosion rates. He mentioned, twice, a specific meeting in 2007 that he believes was "where things really went sideways."
"This pool," he said, gesturing at the green water, "is what happens when you cut the maintenance budget for thirty years and then act surprised when you have algae."
I asked him if he'd seen any other infrastructure situations that reminded him of this.
He inhaled.
"Son," he said, "I have a list."
I gave him my card. He is still emailing me. Both accounts.
There is a photograph that has appeared in every significant presidential ceremony since the March on Washington in 1963. It is the photograph looking east from the Lincoln Memorial steps, the long rectangle of water extending toward the Monument, the Mall filled with bodies, the republic caught mid-breath. It is perhaps the most reproduced image of American civic possibility in existence.
Foreign heads of state have stood at this pool's edge on state visits. French presidents. German chancellors. The pool is a backdrop to the handshake photographs that accompany trade agreements and security treaties. It communicates, without words, that the American experiment is large, permanent, and reflects the sky.
This week, it is reflecting the algae.
I should note that the waterfall in the lobby of the Capitol Grand is also not reflecting anything. The basin has contained a yellow safety cone since Monday. I reported both situations with identical journalistic rigor and reached identical conclusions: no timeline, no comment, and someone will "get back to me."
On my way out of the Mall, I stopped at the visitor services kiosk near the Constitution Avenue entrance and asked for a formal maintenance request form. There were none available. I drafted one on hotel stationery.
That evening, I presented the maintenance request to the front desk at the Capitol Grand on behalf of the National Park Service, citing professional solidarity between federal and private sector infrastructure stakeholders. I attached a photographic exhibit consisting of fourteen photographs I had taken at the Reflecting Pool that afternoon, organized by category: algae coverage, visible pipe damage, tourist reaction, and geopolitical symbolism.
The front desk associate, whose name tag said BRITTANY, reviewed the document with the careful expression of someone being paid fourteen dollars an hour to encounter whatever this was.
"I'll pass this along," she said.
As Murrow once said: "Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."
The Reflecting Pool is green. The pipes are broken. The waterfall in the lobby is still off. The cone has not moved. I am filing from Room 412. The thread count is adequate.
The republic endures.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The photographic exhibit has been cut.]
Sam Turge is Senior Political Correspondent for IRREVERENT Magazine. He filed this piece standing next to algae.