Yeah, from what I've read, it appears to have often been lost among the disingenuous efforts to justify Trump's interference, but she's referring to about 300 thousand gallons of water still leaking from the pool each week, it was apparently 500 gallons before the work done in 2009-2012.
Fox News of course would not reveal the facts to its audience, but the 2009 DBB correctly identified the source problem was that the pool was a huge concrete basin without any foundation work, so the 2009-2012 work installed pilings and a foundation to mitigate further cracking. So far, so good, but being 2009, the builders used PVC piping for the new pumping.. and some of it has given way causing 300 thousand instead of the originally 500 thousand gallons of leaking each week. YOu are correct, that in the original design even such a leak would not be a 'waste', but they also used the up-river source as a drinking water source for Washington, so it got classified as a waste. As a partial solution they switched to using the 'Tidal Basin' (also feed from Potomic) and filtering that independently, and its meant to be recycled, so the water loss is again a 'waste' of that filtration work. I saw so many video images of the empty pool that I began thinking it must have been emptied for work before Trump decided to have it painted, but apparently not, the pool was apparently fine & scheduled for getting the pumping fixed, work that has been sidelined so that it could have a paint job instead; which as you will have heard rises its temperature aggravating algae growth.
It wouldn't happen of it were a swimming pool with lots of water movement, chemicals & recycled filtering, BUT it's a Reflecting Pool that requires still water for the reflecting affect, so very slow recycling and unless you want to kill the ducks and unlucky children you don't pour heaps of chemicals into it.
English
