The contractor responsible for renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has acknowledged that errors in its own work and flaws in the repair plan led to the peeling and tearing of the pool’s new blue liner. This contradicts previous claims of vandalism. Documents reviewed by The New York Times indicate that the issues stemmed from human oversight and a faulty plan involving incompatible chemicals.
The documents reveal that Atlantic Industrial Coatings found discrepancies in both the design and execution of the renovation. This was reported in a detailed document they submitted to the government, along with regular updates from the National Park Service over the last two months.
Despite President Trump’s claims blaming vandals for the damage, the Justice Department dropped charges against the accused individuals. The report from Atlantic, dated August 14, detailed these oversights, with more information provided on September 2. The department began dismissing the cases at the end of July.
Atlantic attributed the damage to insufficient spraying of primer in some areas and, more significantly, the use of two incompatible chemicals as outlined in the repair plan. These errors highlight mishandlings in both the manual application and the theoretical planning stages of the project.