National Park Service Awarded $1.7M No-Bid Contract for Reflecting Pool to Company Owned by Two-Time Felon and Trump Donor John Cafaro

The Contract

In April 2026, the National Park Service awarded Greenwater Services — an Ohio company registered as recently as October 2, 2024 — a $1.7 million sole-source contract to install a "NanoBubble Ozone" water-purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to federal contracting records first reported by The New York Times and independently confirmed by CBS News.

The justification cited in the public filing: urgency. The system had to be in place ahead of the nation's 250th birthday celebrations. The NPS noted that several companies had expressed interest but concluded no other vendor offered equivalent technology, according to the Times.

The company is owned through the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, whose president and CEO is John J. Cafaro, per Federal Election Commission filings.

Who Is John Cafaro

Cafaro is a Trumbull County, Ohio real estate developer who made his fortune building shopping malls. He is also a two-time convicted felon.

In 2002, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe Democratic Rep. James Traficant of Ohio. Traficant was subsequently convicted on 10 felony counts. Cafaro cooperated with prosecutors, was fined $150,000, and was placed on probation, according to The Plain Dealer.

In 2004, he admitted to making an undisclosed $10,000 loan to his daughter Capri Cafaro's congressional campaign in violation of federal campaign finance limits. The loan was never repaid. A judge spent five days jailing Cafaro over dissatisfaction with his financial disclosures before ultimately sentencing him to probation and a $250,000 fine, per The Plain Dealer.

Both charges were felonies.

Cafaro has donated at least $250,000 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee as of 2020, and more than $300,000 to Trump-linked political committees overall, per FEC records cited by CBS News. He and his wife own a home in Palm Beach, Florida, less than a mile from Mar-a-Lago. FEC records also show donations to Democrats at various points.

Trump has publicly described Cafaro as a "fantastic man," according to the Times.

The Algae Problem

The broader context is a $14.7 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that Trump personally championed, including repainting the interior his chosen "American flag blue." The total cost ran more than seven times Trump's original $1.8 million estimate.

Within 24 hours of the renovation's completion, the pool turned green with algae. The blue paint coating also began flaking off and floating to the surface.

Cafaro's Defense

Cafaro told the Tribune Chronicle he is not surprised by the controversy, and offered a specific technical explanation: his system worked by killing algae living inside the pool's underground pipes, which then flushed into the open basin, causing the visible green discoloration. "It turned green because the technology worked. It killed the algae in the pipes," he said.

He also stated he asked the National Park Service to open the contract to competitive bidding. According to Cafaro, the NPS declined, telling him "no one else does what you do."

On Trump's involvement, Cafaro was direct: "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."

Greenwater Services issued a statement to CBS News describing its NanoBubble technology as "environmentally conscious" and "science-based," but offered no specific explanation for the pool's problems.

The No-Bid Award Raises Questions

A $1.7 million sole-source contract bypassed competitive bidding. The company receiving it was registered in Ohio less than two years ago (October 2024). Its owner is a felon with a documented history of campaign-related legal violations. That same owner has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the sitting president who personally promoted the project. The NPS urgency exemption is a real mechanism, but its use for a high-profile political project tied to a Trump donor is exactly the kind of scenario the competitive-bidding process is designed to scrutinize.

White House and Interior Department spokespeople told the Times the White House was not involved in selecting Greenwater. No investigation has been announced, and no charges have been filed related to this contract.

The urgency rationale is auditable. The NPS filing states multiple firms expressed interest before the agency concluded Greenwater's technology had no equivalent. Whether that conclusion was reached through rigorous technical review or informal preference is an open question the sources do not resolve.

What Greenwater Has Done Before

Federal records show Greenwater held one prior government contract: a $1 million deal awarded in 2025 for a feasibility study on treating sewage flows in the Tijuana River, according to CBS News. The company also posted photos on LinkedIn of water treatment work it performed on a pond at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey golf club.

Greenwater Services was registered in Ohio on October 2, 2024. Its trade name, Green Water Solutions, was filed for recognition on May 27, 2025. Cafaro told the Tribune Chronicle he was approached about the underlying nano-bubble technology roughly three years ago, and that it has been tested by Ohio State and Florida State universities and holds a patent.

The Open Question

The NPS's April 2026 urgency filing is a public document. It cites the semiquincentennial deadline as the basis for bypassing competition. Whether independent technical experts would agree that no other vendor could provide equivalent water-purification technology, or whether that assessment was shaped by the pool's political profile, has not been independently evaluated by any source in this reporting.