An Ohio company whose owner is a longtime Trump donor and a twice-convicted felon landed one of two no-bid federal contracts behind President Donald Trump’s troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — work that turned the National Mall landmark green with algae within days of being declared finished.
Greenwater Services, also registered as Green Water Solutions LLC and based in Brookfield in Trumbull County, received a $1,740,255 contract from the U.S. Department of the Interior to install a “nano bubble” water-purification system at the pool, according to federal contracting records. The award, which took effect April 13, was made without competitive bidding; the National Park Service cited “unusual and compelling urgency” tied to the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations.
Those records list the firm as an entity of the John J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by John J. “J.J.” Cafaro of Liberty, the former executive vice president of the Youngstown-based Cafaro Company, the mall-development firm his father founded. CBS News reported that Cafaro is identified as the trust’s president and CEO on Federal Election Commission filings.
A landmark gone green
Trump ordered the roughly $14.7 million overhaul this spring, repeatedly demanding the century-old pool be drained, resealed and painted what he called “American flag blue” ahead of July 4. He declared the project complete on June 6. Within roughly a day, the water turned green with algae, and the new coating soon began flaking off and floating to the surface.
National Park Service crews have since poured hydrogen peroxide into the basin, vacuumed algae from the bottom and run the ozone-bubble equipment in an effort to clear the water. The pool is now set to be drained again so the coating can be repaired. In a statement to CBS News, the coating contractor said the affected spots are “a very small part of the massive 7 acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” and that the work would be completed under warranty once the pool is drained.
Greenwater’s water-treatment deal is separate from the project’s main contract. A second no-bid award — worth $14,652,521 under federal records — went to Atlantic Industrial Coatings LLC of New Canton, Virginia, to reseal the pool’s joints and apply the blue coating. The Virginia firm painted the floor; the Ohio firm was hired to keep the water clear.
Two felonies and a presidential friendship
Cafaro’s legal history is extensive. In 2001 he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe then-U.S. Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, and testified against him; he was fined $150,000 and placed on probation. In 2010 he pleaded guilty again, this time to a felony count of making a materially false statement to the government by concealing a $10,000 loan to a campaign manager for the 2004 congressional bid of his daughter, Capri Cafaro. That case brought a $250,000 fine and three years of probation, as the Tribune Chronicle reported.
Cafaro has been a substantial financial supporter of the president. He gave $250,000 to the Trump Victory committee in 2020 and $100,000 in 2024, according to FEC records, and owns a Palm Beach home near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. The New York Times, which first tied Greenwater to Cafaro, reported that Trump has described him as a “fantastic man.”
Cafaro, in turn, dismissed the controversy. He told the Tribune Chronicle that the green water was evidence his technology had done its job: “The system is working. We weren’t hired to clean the pool, but to sell them permanent equipment to clean it forever. It turned green because the technology worked. It killed the algae in the pipes.” He said the scrutiny was “people who don’t seem to like Trump,” and insisted the president had no role in the award: “He is my friend and he doesn’t know a thing about it. I would never talk to him about it. I’d never put him in that position.”
Asked about his stake in the company, Cafaro told the paper: “I’m nothing officially in the company. They all work for me, but it has its own CEO and COO. I have so many different entities that I can’t keep track of them. That’s what the attorneys and the accountants are for.”
How the work was awarded
The New York Times reported that David Schutzenhofer, the general manager of Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, helped recruit Greenwater and was in contact with the firm in January. Federal records show the company had held only one prior government contract before the Reflecting Pool job, and state filings show Greenwater registered in Ohio in October 2024 and obtained trade-name recognition in May 2025.
The coating contract raises its own questions. Trump publicly estimated the project would cost about $1.8 million; the initial contract value was already $6,886,519, and the total climbed to $13.1 million by early May before reaching $14.65 million in federal records. Atlantic Industrial Coatings had never previously held a federal contract, and its website describes its specialty as waterproofing highway culverts, pipes, roofs and storage tanks — not pools. Trump initially said he chose the firm because it had worked on swimming pools at his Virginia golf club, a claim the Times reported it could not confirm; he later said he had no relationship with the company.
Congressional and legal scrutiny
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote to Atlantic Industrial Coatings chief executive Curtis Wood in mid-May seeking records on how the firm won the work. The award and the cost growth, Blumenthal wrote, “raise troubling questions about whether excess taxpayer dollars are (yet again) being diverted to President Trump’s manifestly unqualified friends and associates.”
The no-bid awards have drawn wider oversight. As Scripps News reported, the D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation sued in May to halt the renovation, arguing the administration sidestepped federal laws requiring public notice and review before work on a historic site. The administration completed the coating before any ruling on the merits.
The White House has denied involvement in choosing the contractors. “This contract was awarded by the Department of Interior,” spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Scripps News, calling reporting on potential conflicts of interest “irresponsible.” An Interior Department spokeswoman has said the agency was unaware of Cafaro’s political affiliation and selected Greenwater because it had the expertise and materials to finish on time.
Trump, for his part, has blamed the pool’s condition on vandalism without offering evidence, warning of a 10-year prison sentence for anyone caught damaging the site. He has said multiple people were arrested; one, three-time Olympic canoeist David Carter Hearn, has denied wrongdoing and said he was only examining the peeling paint.
The episode returns an Ohio name to a national stage it has occupied before. The Cafaro family’s mall empire has shaped the Mahoning Valley for generations, and J.J. Cafaro’s daughter, Capri Cafaro, represented the area in the Ohio Senate as a Democrat from 2007 to 2016. Now the family’s name is attached to a federal contract that, by its owner’s own account, turned the country’s most famous reflecting pool green.
