Fallon mocks firm behind green Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool fiasco

Jimmy Fallon’s “Nailed it.” joke landed because the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool had already become a visual punch line, turning dark green from algae after Donald Trump pushed to remake it in “American flag blue” for the nation’s 250th anniversary. The gag captured a deeper problem: a federal project meant to signal polish and patriotism instead looked, on the National Mall, like a public-works failure.

The cleanup has become far more expensive than Trump originally suggested. The renovation has topped $14.6 million, and Public Citizen said the broader work ballooned to $13.1 million, more than seven times the $1.8 million the president publicly promised. Crews have used hydrogen peroxide and other measures to fight the algae, while the blue paint on the pool’s base was reported to be chipping and peeling, undercutting the makeover’s intended effect.

At the center of the backlash is Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, the company the National Park Service awarded a $1.7 million no-bid federal contract to install a Nano Bubble filtration system for the reflecting pool. Federal records and Federal Election Commission filings identify the owner as John J. Cafaro of the JJ Cafaro Investment Trust. Those same records show Cafaro gave $250,000 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee in 2020, and he has also been reported to have pleaded guilty in 2010 to campaign finance violations and earlier to conspiring to bribe former Democratic Rep. James Traficant.

The National Park Service’s planning documents show the project was not supposed to be a cosmetic stunt. The rehabilitation, funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was intended to address structural deficiencies, water leakage, accessibility and water quality. The agency said differential soil settlement had compromised the pool’s structural system and that the pool had no circulation or filtration system before the overhaul, leaving the water vulnerable to the kind of problems now on display.

Public Citizen has filed FOIA requests over the contracts for both the blue paint work and the water-purification system, arguing the administration rushed the project without transparency or public input. The company has also drawn scrutiny for a separate 2025 federal contract worth $1 million for a Tijuana River sewage feasibility study, after a U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission pilot project said its ozone nanobubble technology could kill bacteria and reduce odors in polluted water. Fallon was not alone in turning the episode into satire, with Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers also mocking the green pool, the cost overruns and the cleanup failures that turned a makeover into a national embarrassment.