The Interior Department is paying a Maryland landscaping company almost $3.4 million to repair turf it says vandals damaged over the summer.
The department told The Washington Sun in a statement Thursday that the work — described in the contract as for “turf repairs from A250” — involves restoring turf across the National Mall, including a large patch of damaged grass between the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial.
The damaged area was “vandalized with massive 8647 chemical burns,” the statement said. In June, U.S. Park Police began investigating suspected vandalism after finding the numbers 86 and 47 marked in the same area of the grass, ABC reported. The Department of Justice has interpreted the numbers as a threat against President Donald Trump, with “86” meaning “to get rid of” and Trump being the 47th president.
Nearly a month after the June incident, the area of grass was the site of a stage Trump built for his Fourth of July celebration. He later blamed vandals for damaging the grass.
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“The work includes a combination of new sod, decompaction, aeration and reseeding, as well as updates to irrigation,” the Interior Department’s statement said. “Our turf maintenance crews routinely maintain and restore the Mall’s grounds and are well equipped to complete this work.”
The contract with the family-owned company, Custom Lawn Service Inc., ends in March 2027. The Interior Department hired the same company last March to perform maintenance on the National Mall’s turf in a contract that also runs through March 2027.
Interior also paid the company nearly $1.8 million in late June in a contract described as “mall fuel spill urgent cleanup.” A department official said that contract was for cleaning up fuel that spilled in May. According to NBC, 30 gallons of fuel spilled onto the National Mall during a Freedom 250 event on May 17, which officials also blamed on vandals.
Custom Lawn Service did not respond to a request for comment.
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