Photo by His Noodly Appendage

Before its $34 million renovation, the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool was full of goose poop and didn’t really seem to reflect much of anything. But after that two-year renovation, it’s still full of something—and this time it’s algae.

The Post reports that algae has quickly bloomed in the new Reflecting Pool—some on the surface, some on the bottom—making it look like pea soup in some areas. The algae is blamed on a change in the source of the water—it’s being drawn from the Tidal Basin instead of from D.C. water reservoirs—a shallower pool that allows algae to bloom more quickly and some fine-tuning that has to be done on the amount of ozone in the water:

Officials are working to remove the algae by increasing the level of ozone in the water to treat what is there and prevent more from growing. The agency plans a one-time removal of the algae, but first the ozone level needs to be fine-tuned, Johnson said.

How they’ll do that has not been determined, Johnson said, and the full cost of repairs is not yet known.

“We don’t want to go in there and remove it and have it re-bloom,” Johnson said.

If the name were simply changed to the Lincoln Memorial Algae Pool, the renovation project would seem like an absolute success.