Reflecting Pool Is Now Under Siege by a Different and More Aggressive' Form of Algae: Report
www.mediaite.com
... President Donald Trump's $14 million renovation project at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is not going well. In fact, the efforts to kill off the algae are apparently helping foster a new, even more aggressive algae, according to tests conducted by a reporter for The Atlantic.
The Atlantic decided to run its own tests on the water. Viser gathered samples from multiple areas of the Reflecting Pool, and brought them to two different scientists for testing.
"Testing reveals that efforts to suppress one algal bloom seem to be fueling another," wrote Viser, and the "workers battling against nature" in "the country's most high-profile science experiment" may actually be making things worse.
"After a week of combat," wrote Viser, "they have essentially killed off one type of algae infesting the pool, only to create the conditions for a new type to take over. And Scenedesmus, a genus of green algae nicknamed Skinny Dead Mouse' by scientists, is now flourishing," according to the tests they ran.
The original algae that showed up in the Reflecting Pool "appeared to be a blue-green cyanobacterial bloom," wrote Viser, and that type can sometimes produce neurotoxins that are dangerous for humans and animals.
One of the scientists who tested the samples was Hans W. Paerl, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Paerl examined the samples under a microscope and found "remnants of the previous bloom" of the blue-green algae, "but they were too degraded to identify," wrote Viser, and he believed this was caused, at least in part, by the hydrogen peroxide.
"The guys dealing with peroxide treatment can pat themselves on the back," said Paerl. "But it doesn't really solve the overall problem."
"What's happened is they've just switched the players. And the green algae are just taking over," Paerl explained, and this new green algae "is a pretty aggressive grower." ...
The Reflecting Pool itself was already an ideal environment for algae, Boyer said.
"If I was going to design a facility to grow algae," Boyer explained, "I would probably design a facility that had a lot of surface area and was very shallow, so you have sunlight down to the bottom. And put a lot of nutrients in it. And that's pretty much what the Reflecting Pool is. It's just a perfect facility for growing algae."
The deep blue paint that Trump had added only made it worse, wrote Viser, because it "raised the water temperature and accelerated the growth." ...
