Reflecting Pool being refilled after months of controversy

After months of repairs, setbacks, and controversy, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is finally filling back up. Fox 5's Homa Bash is live there tonight with a look at the latest progress. Homa. Tisha, what a beautiful night to be out here. It is happening slowly but surely. I'll be honest, we didn't see any progress happening today. This began yesterday, and people we spoke with people who are visiting here from all over, those who live here, they are just ready to see the reflecting pool back in its old glory nice now you have to remove the fence then it's more beautiful i have no comparison i don't know how it looked before so but when it fills up maybe it'll look better i hope it looks better than it did the last time you think it's time money well spent no no i don't they should have not touched it to begin with it's how i feel but it's beautiful A lot of opinions. Here is how the reflecting pool looks today, a day after refilling began on a renovation project that has been rough from the start. You can see a few workers seemingly sweeping around the surface today. Signs on the fencing around the pool from the National Park Service saying the water may look cloudy at first, but should clear as the pool fills. Crews installed a new blue coating earlier this year, but the pool had to be drained after it started peeling. There were also, of course, algae issues. President Trump blaming vandals repeatedly, but federal prosecutors have said the damage was caused by problems with the installation. A judge earlier this month dismissing the government's case against a former Olympian accused of tearing pieces of the pool after the U.S. Attorney's Office asked to drop charges. Still, the president insisting vandalism was to blame, despite his own Justice Department's findings. Well, we had vandalism there, and we have it about as vandal-proof as you can get, but only sick people do that. It's always amazing. It's the reflecting pool. You think it was worth all the work, time, effort, money? No comment on that, but when they built it, it's an amazing thing. Capital's an amazing place. Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial. It's incredible. You can't mess that up, no matter who you are. We waste a lot of money in other places. We can spend it here. Okay, so how much did we spend? Well, estimates are between $15 million to $16 million, way, way higher than the original $1 million to $2 million that we heard the entire project was going to cost earlier this year. We reached out to the Department of Interior, the National Park Service, the White House today. They would only refer us back to the president's comments from last week in terms of a timeline, how much it is costing, and when this fencing could potentially come down and this could all be back open to the public. Tisha.