The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Greenwater Services, based in rural Ohio, had just three full-time employees and a low corporate profile before President Trump’s effort to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday. The company — partly owned by Trump’s friend John “J.J.” Cafaro — obtained a no-bid, $1.7 million contract to clean the pool after algae blooms and peeling paint turned the water a slimy green, making the renovation, in the Journal’s words, “the punchline for late-night monologues.”
The Journal’s investigation traced a web of connections: Cafaro, a scion of the family-owned Cafaro Co., a major shopping-center developer, was convicted in 2002 of conspiracy to commit bribery after testifying to handing a congressman $13,000 in cash and other favors in exchange for federal contracts for an aerospace company his daughter led. Eight years later, he pleaded guilty to a second felony — making a false statement to the government — tied to a loan he gave a staffer on his daughter’s failed congressional campaign, a loan he later concealed from investigators.
In 2016, Cafaro donated $50,000 to a televised fundraiser hosted by Trump, earning a public shout-out from the then-candidate. Federal contracting records list a trust belonging to Cafaro as Greenwater’s owner. The company’s corporate address is a home Cafaro owns in Palm Beach County, Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Greenwater President Chas Antinone Jr., standing by the pool last week as tourists debated its color, scooped a bottle of water and held it to the sun. “It’s not going to get much better than that,” he said, describing the water as clear. Spokeswoman Erin Kramer told the Journal that Cafaro’s role was simply that of an investor. “He’s just an Ohio businessman that invested in an Ohio company,” she said. “That’s kind of the extent of his involvement.” Cafaro did not return calls for comment.
The reflecting pool contract was not Greenwater’s first no-bid federal job. In August, the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission — operating under State Department guidance and overseen by a Trump appointee — awarded Greenwater a pilot-project contract worth up to $2.5 million to test its technology on the Tijuana River in San Diego County. The river carries as much as 30 million gallons of sewage daily from Tijuana, Mexico, making nearby beaches unsafe and causing respiratory problems for residents of Imperial Beach and surrounding communities.
The commission said it agreed to the rare no-bid arrangement because of its “responsibility to think creatively and evaluate every credible tool” to address the crisis. But the pilot ended early after a storm in October washed away Greenwater’s equipment, a risk that an Environmental Protection Agency engineer had predicted months earlier. Douglas Liden, an environmental engineer with the EPA’s border office, wrote in a May 2025 email obtained by a nonprofit group: “I really don’t think the ozone will do any good unless you are able to ozonate the entire flow.” He added, “I also think the first storm will wash out any equipment you install.” The commission said Friday that the project showed it could kill bacteria and eliminate odors, but the equipment and design would need modification. Antinone agreed, saying a substantially larger operation would be needed to affect the river.
Greenwater uses a proprietary ozone-nanobubble system — a contraption the size of a small trailer that pumps ozone gas into microscopic bubbles, allowing it to spread more widely through water. The company has completed about 15 jobs in three states.
The technology received mixed reviews from water experts. Heather Raymond, a water-quality researcher at Ohio State University, said the company’s technology shows promise and called it “a good technology.” But Bud Howard, an official with the Loxahatchee River district in Florida, recalled that after Cafaro called him five years ago to pitch Greenwater following a local contamination report, the company ran tests that worked in 250-gallon containers but “didn’t meaningfully clean up the river.”
The White House and the National Park Service have denied that Cafaro or anyone in the administration played any role in securing Greenwater’s recent federal contracts.
By the end of the week, the reflecting pool’s water had largely cleared, and crews erected fencing in preparation for the July Fourth fireworks display. Antinone, whose phone number had been inundated with angry voicemails before he had it removed, said his company has nothing to hide. “We’ve got nothing to hide,” he told the Journal during an hourlong interview at the site.