Reflecting Pool Contractor Blames Itself, Not Vandals

The contractor that renovated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has told the Trump administration that its own mistakes — and a flawed repair plan written into the contract — caused the pool's new blue liner to peel and break loose, not vandals.

Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the company hired to renovate the Reflecting Pool, took responsibility for the damage in reports to the government, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and published Friday.

President Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals wielding knives or box cutters for tearing the pool's "American flag blue" liner. The contractor's documents point somewhere else.

The company cited "human oversight" on some patches, where workers did not apply enough chemical primer to bond the layers of the liner together. The bigger problem, it said, was the repair plan itself: the contract called for two chemicals that are incompatible.

The chemical on top reached a temperature hotter than the compound underneath could withstand, and the heat caused the bottom layer to blister and come loose, the documents show, per the Times. The contractor said it had not expected that outcome because it is very uncommon to mix the two products that way.

The Paper Trail

The documents include Atlantic's reports to the government and daily progress updates from the National Park Service over the past two months, the Times reported. They had not previously been reported.