Scientist suggests environmental friendly idea to cure Reflecting Pool algae

[Igel]

3. Poorly.

Filtration systems. The previous repair cost something like $34 million and took a couple of years. It did a lot more, used river water instead of city water. But the algae remained the same. (Oh, city water contains phosphate. What does river water contain--and did they fix the sewage runoff upstream of the capital completely yet?)

The nano-bubbler business may be the first application to something like the reflecting pool but it has been used for years in things like ponds. If you've ever been splashing around in a pond, whether in Maryland (or Jersey or New York state) or in Oregon, 'clear, blue water' like in lagoons in Cozumel or beaches on Grand Cayman are not what comes to mind.

Reflecting pool is a great concept, but an engineering disaster--built on landfill, materials structurally not up to the job, an impossible water purification situation. I mean, even if you start off with pristine, pure and uncontaminated water, you have ducks and other birds crapping (and sometimes dying) in it because that's what ducks do. Dust and other air-borne particulates settle into the water. Tourists will throw trash in, and while the ducks might like those tortilla chips and hamburger rolls, so do other decomposers that will gladly render nutrients water soluble and useable by producers like algae.