Lawsuit seeks to halt Trump's $13m makeover of Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

A project to fix and paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which President Donald Trump said would cost up to $2m (£1.5m), is now expected to cost $13.1m, federal records show.

The no-bid contract went to a Virginia company, which critics say bypassed a federal requirement for competing offers.

That decision prompted a lawsuit from a nonprofit group asking for the work to be halted. It argues Trump ignored laws that limit changes to historical landmarks.

The pool makeover began last week as part of Trump's bid to beautify the US capital ahead of America's 250th birthday celebrations this summer.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation filed its lawsuit on Monday asking a judge to halt the renovations.

"Every day that the resurfacing continues, the historic character of the Reflecting Pool is being further and fundamentally altered," the legal filing says.

When asked about the project on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that "for the first time since 1922 [the reflecting pool is] going to work properly".

The pool underwent a $34m renovation between 2010 and 2012 when Barack Obama was president. It was restored and enhanced with a new circulation and filtration system.

But even after that, leaks persisted and algae bloomed in the pool.

The new contract says the work on the pool will be completed by 22 May, a much quicker timeline than originally expected. It would be just in time for America's semiquincentennial on 4 July.

The pool, stretching 2,030ft (620m) between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, has long been plagued by leaks, structural deterioration, faulty pipes, algae growth and bird droppings.

The Trump administration awarded a contract - totalling $6.9m - to a preferred vendor, using an exemption meant for emergency situations.

Federal records now show that $13.1m has been awarded for the project - more than seven times what the president initially estimated.

The contract was granted by the Department of the Interior, which oversees natural resources and cultural heritage in the US, to a firm called Atlantic Industrial Coatings.

The BBC has contacted Atlantic Industrial Coatings for comment.

On Tuesday, Trump sought to distance himself from the contract as he maintained the work would fix leaking at the reflecting pool and was not simply a paint job.

He posted on his Truth Social platform that he "didn't give out the contract" and that the Department of the Interior awarded the work "to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before".

But speaking last month, the president said he brushed aside bids to fix the reflecting pool because he had "a better way of doing it" that would cost between $1.5m and $2m.

"I said, what we're going to do is I'm going to call all three of these people that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools," he said on 23 April.

The president visited the site last week to take a first-hand look at the drained pool.

It is the latest in series of projects that Trump has taken on since returning to Washington.

He wants to construct a 250-foot victory arch, has demolished the White House East Wing to build a ballroom, and has added his name to institutions such as the Kennedy Center and Institute of Peace.