I used to jog around the area once a year for about a decade back in the 2000s. It wasn't clean like a swimming pool, but certainly not festooned with dead ducks and pond scum like Trump's $14M fiasco.I lived in the DC suburbs, and never saw dead ducks or an algae-infested swamp back in the 1970s, though I obviously wasn't on the Mall every day.
I'm not talking about the water. I'm talking about the incompetent application of the liner, which is probably partly related to Trump ordering his pool guy to rush through the job.