Speaker 1: Hey there. I'm Kyle Trigsta, Politics editor for Bloomberg Government,
Speaker 1: and I'm Greg Durou, Senior Elections reporter for Bloomberg Government.
Speaker 1: Check out our podcast, down Ballot Counts. Each week, Greg
Speaker 1: and I will be breaking down all of those down
Speaker 1: ballot elections that make up the fight for the US Congress.
Speaker 1: Listen and subscribe to down Ballot Counts from Bloomberg Government
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Today, on Parts Pervilion, we're
Speaker 1: talking about golf courses. Did you know that it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of hard for golf courses to abide by all
Speaker 1: the environmental regulations that are out there. You know what
Speaker 1: makes it even harder, though, when your golf course is
Speaker 1: owned by the President of the United States of America. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome back once again to Parts Pervillion, the environmental
Speaker 1: podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host, David Schultz. So
Speaker 1: you've probably heard that Donald Trump owns a golf course
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. It's called the Trump National Bedminster, and
Speaker 1: it's just outside of New York City. You may not
Speaker 1: have heard, however, that this golf course has spent the
Speaker 1: last decade or so trying to resolve an environmental dispute
Speaker 1: with the state of New Jersey. Now, before you get
Speaker 1: your torches and pitchforks out, it should be said that
Speaker 1: these are some relatively minor issues as far as environmental
Speaker 1: law violations go. They basically concerned some damage to sensitive
Speaker 1: wetlands on and around the course. But when an environmental
Speaker 1: violation happens at a business owned by the president, nothing
Speaker 1: is ever simple. Bloomberg Glass Steven Lee wrote about this
Speaker 1: dispute between New Jersey environmental officials and the Trump national
Speaker 1: and he says the whole matter illustrates why when policymakers
Speaker 1: own businesses, things can get messy really fast. But first
Speaker 1: Stephen explained exactly what a wetland is and why damaging
Speaker 1: one is not good for the environment. Wetlands are areas
Speaker 1: where you have water covering the soil, or water just
Speaker 1: beneath the surface of the soil. So it's that marshy,
Speaker 1: swampy land that you see in Florida like the Everglades,
Speaker 1: and up along the East Coast through New England, that's
Speaker 1: all wetlands. Most of the East Coast actually qualifies as
Speaker 1: a wetland environment according to the Fish and Wildlife Service,
Speaker 1: So why are they important because they are super productive
Speaker 1: ecosystems that provide habitats for all kinds of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, insects,
Speaker 1: and plants. Of course, the EPA calls them biological supermarkets
Speaker 1: because they provide a lot of food for animal species.
Speaker 1: They also store a lot of carbon, which can help
Speaker 1: mitigate climate change. And then they act as kind of
Speaker 1: sponges to soak up surface water or storm surges and rain,
Speaker 1: so that can be important to minimize flooding. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, they can act as a kind of
Speaker 1: a filter for pollution. Their wetlands are tightly regulated by
Speaker 1: the EPA and the States because they recognize how important
Speaker 1: they are. And historically the basic ideas has been no
Speaker 1: net loss, meaning we want to preserve and even expand
Speaker 1: the nation's wetlands. But that has been unwound under the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, which has lifted federal protections for I think
Speaker 1: about half the nation's wetlands. Well, that's a great explanation
Speaker 1: of why they're important, and I think this is just
Speaker 1: one of many things that I feel like people have
Speaker 1: done a one to eighty on, you know, in the
Speaker 1: sort of forties and fifties and maybe sixties. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea I think when you encountered a swamp was
Speaker 1: this is bad. You know, it's full of disease and bugs.
Speaker 1: Let's get rid of it. Let's drain in and build
Speaker 1: something on it. And now I think after the environmental
Speaker 1: movement started, we just have a completely opposite viewpoint. And
Speaker 1: I think people realized that, as you mentioned, wetlands are
Speaker 1: really important from an environmental standpoint. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's also because so much of particularly
Speaker 1: the East Coast and also down through the South, is
Speaker 1: a wetland environment because there's also you know, that's where
Speaker 1: there's been so much building in the last you know, however,
Speaker 1: many decades. There's always this tension between preserving wetlands and
Speaker 1: also developing, and I think that's what we are sort
Speaker 1: of seeing that in the Bedminster case. Well, let's get
Speaker 1: right into it. So, you know, we're talking about the
Speaker 1: President's golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, which is on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the you know, New York City metropolitan area.
Speaker 1: Sounds like, based on your story, I gathered that around
Speaker 1: ten years ago or so, there were some wetland violations
Speaker 1: happening at this golf course. Can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about what was going on there? Well, So
Speaker 1: Donald Trump bought the land in two thousand and two
Speaker 1: and he started building the Bedminster Golf Club, which is
Speaker 1: one of the crown jewels of his business empire. It's
Speaker 1: something that the President is extremely proud of. It's actually
Speaker 1: where he said he wants to be buried well. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean we should point out not just that, but
Speaker 1: this is also a significant in that this is the
Speaker 1: place where he held a fundraiser I think the day
Speaker 1: before it was announced that he had coronavirus, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I think it was October first, And yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of outrage about, you know, him holding that
Speaker 1: event when he was presumably contagious. But that's not what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. We're talking about wetlands. Mm hmm. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so shortly after construction started at Bedminster, the New Jersey
Speaker 1: Department of Environmental Protection started hitting the golf course with
Speaker 1: a range of violations of their permits, all having to
Speaker 1: do with water. There were, you know, unauthorized disturbances with
Speaker 1: freshwater wetlands and wetland transition areas and state open waters
Speaker 1: and there was kind of small amounts of water. And
Speaker 1: the two sides have been working together over the years
Speaker 1: to resolve these violations, and they have apparently all been
Speaker 1: settled except for one. Well, and this is what I
Speaker 1: wanted to get into. And what I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting about your story is that it illustrates something that
Speaker 1: I've noticed in environmental enforcement all the time, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, when a company or an individual violates
Speaker 1: an environmental regulation, they're not necessarily required to like undo
Speaker 1: the damage they've done. Sometimes they can, I guess, atone
Speaker 1: for that by restoring the ecology elsewhere. It sounds like
Speaker 1: that's what's going on at Bedminster, right. I think that's right,
Speaker 1: and you're right, these kinds of arrangements are fairly common.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a regulator will tell you to mitigate something because
Speaker 1: you literally cannot fix what you've done. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you've built a lot of big buildings or other
Speaker 1: infrastructure and then the regulator comes in and says you
Speaker 1: shouldn't have done that, or there's some kind of environmental
Speaker 1: problem with the footprint of what you've built, it is
Speaker 1: not always practical to tear all that down and try
Speaker 1: to fix it. So you can sometimes gopreciate with the
Speaker 1: regulator to compensate for the damage by fixing something else,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened in this case. Bedminster and New
Speaker 1: Jersey had agreed that the golf course would essentially compensate
Speaker 1: for unavoidable environmental damage by creating thirty one thousand square
Speaker 1: feet of wetlands on the golf course in sort of
Speaker 1: a different area. And last November, Bedminster laid out a
Speaker 1: proposal to do that, and New Jersey responded this year
Speaker 1: by saying that essentially their plan is not good enough
Speaker 1: and has to be changed. That actually happened two weeks
Speaker 1: before the Trump administration issued its new rule that rolls
Speaker 1: back protections for many wetlands. We're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break now, but don't go anywhere because when we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll hear more about this case. Stay tuned. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is really complicated, and this is this is why
Speaker 1: I really love this story because there's so many factors
Speaker 1: at play here. You have the President's golf course with
Speaker 1: some wetland violations. The state of New Jersey, which we
Speaker 1: should note is you know, the governor of the state
Speaker 1: of New Jersey is not of the President's party. The
Speaker 1: state of New Jersey is issuing them some violation notices
Speaker 1: for what went down at the golf course. The golf
Speaker 1: course is trying to deal with this. But then at
Speaker 1: the same time, the President himself, acting as the president,
Speaker 1: is changing the rules around protections of the wetlands that
Speaker 1: would affect his own golf course potentially. I mean, am
Speaker 1: I do I have that right? I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: if I fully comprehend what's going on here. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. I mean, we don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: what the linkages are. So in other words, it did
Speaker 1: President Trump issue his or direct his EPA to you know,
Speaker 1: change the rules on wetlands because of the problems that
Speaker 1: he was having at Minister. Probably not. But nevertheless, the
Speaker 1: facts that you've laid out are accurate. Now, okay, and
Speaker 1: we should say you talked to the Bedminster golf course here.
Speaker 1: You reached out to them, right, and did they respond? No,
Speaker 1: they never got back to me. We reached out to
Speaker 1: the White House also and to the Trump organization, and
Speaker 1: they never responded. So the other thing that I really
Speaker 1: liked about your story is that you also talk to
Speaker 1: other people who are familiar with managing golf courses and
Speaker 1: dealing with environmental issues on golf courses, and it sounded
Speaker 1: like they said that the Trump Golf Club here is
Speaker 1: dealing with these environmental issues in a pretty standard way.
Speaker 1: That this is you know, they're actually, you know, not
Speaker 1: trying to get around any of these state issues. And
Speaker 1: and I think one person mentioned that if they were,
Speaker 1: the state of New Jersey would be on top of
Speaker 1: them really quickly, you know. Yeah. I talked to a
Speaker 1: group called the National Golf Course Owners Association and a
Speaker 1: couple of you know, pretty veteran golf course architects, and
Speaker 1: what they say is that when you are building a
Speaker 1: golf course, you're essentially in the land stewardship business, and
Speaker 1: it's very common, according to them, for a regulator to
Speaker 1: come in and take issue with the way you've done it.
Speaker 1: Bedminster is a very large golf course. It's about four
Speaker 1: times bigger than the average golf course in the US,
Speaker 1: and of course, it is located in a wetland area,
Speaker 1: and some golf course people have said that, you know,
Speaker 1: it can be hard to determine the boundaries of designated
Speaker 1: permitted areas, especially before you've cleared the land in some cases,
Speaker 1: they say it's pretty subjective and there can be good
Speaker 1: faith disagreements about where the boundaries should be drawn. It
Speaker 1: should be noted I think that Bedminster is actually a
Speaker 1: member of the National golf Course Owners Association. These were
Speaker 1: the people who are saying that these kinds of violations
Speaker 1: are fairly standard. But nevertheless, we do know that not
Speaker 1: every violation a business commits is a wilful one, and
Speaker 1: sometimes things just happen, Yeah, for sure. So overall, it
Speaker 1: sounds like, even though the state recently rejected the golf
Speaker 1: course's plan to mitigate the environmental damage it caused, it
Speaker 1: sounds like the negotiations between the golf course and the
Speaker 1: state of New Jersey are growing relatively smoothly. I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like there's any you know, real major
Speaker 1: conflict there. Despite that, though, it sounds like the President
Speaker 1: himself has weighed in on this to some extent. What
Speaker 1: did he say, Well, he hasn't. I'm not aware that
Speaker 1: he has spoken specifically about Bedminster, but you know, he
Speaker 1: has said many times that there's too much red tape
Speaker 1: in this country and it's made it too hard to
Speaker 1: get anything built. He gave a speech in Atlanta in July,
Speaker 1: in which he said, and here I'll quote him, I
Speaker 1: was in business for a long time, and I had
Speaker 1: to go through a process that was so ridiculous. It
Speaker 1: was so ridiculous. We went through a process for building buildings.
Speaker 1: Usually it would take forever. By the time you'd start building,
Speaker 1: the market changed. You said, you know, the market was
Speaker 1: good when we started. Now the market is lousy, so
Speaker 1: you'd say, the hell with it, we won't build. So
Speaker 1: that's a pretty standard conservative argument for deregulation. Again, we
Speaker 1: don't know that the violations at Bedminster directly fed into
Speaker 1: the presidence thinking on environmental rules or water rules. I
Speaker 1: think it's likely that he's not even aware of this.
Speaker 1: But what we do know, because he's said it many times,
Speaker 1: is that he has had these kinds of experiences in
Speaker 1: the past with regulators. He has battled regulators many times
Speaker 1: with his real estate properties and his casinos and Trump
Speaker 1: University and other businesses. So I would say that for
Speaker 1: Trump to have problems at his golf course is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that he's experienced many times in the past.
Speaker 1: And of course, any president's personal experience is going to
Speaker 1: feed into his or her governing philosophy. Well, thank you, Steven.
Speaker 1: I think I will say I think your Trump impression
Speaker 1: could use a little bit of work. I don't think
Speaker 1: you're going to be cast on Saturday Night Live anytime soon,
Speaker 1: but thank you. We appreciate you coming on. Thanks David.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode of Parts per Billion. If
Speaker 1: you want more environmental news, check us out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We use a pretty easy to remember handle. It's at environment.
Speaker 1: Just that at Environment, I'm at David B. Schultz if
Speaker 1: you want to yell directly at me about anything. Today's
Speaker 1: episode of partsper Billion was produced by myself and Josh Block.
Speaker 1: Parts Pavilion was created by Jessic Coombs and Rachel Dagel.
Speaker 1: The music for today's episode is a Message by Jazarre
Speaker 1: and Feel That Beat by Tom Hillock and Nicholas Boskovic.
Speaker 1: They were used under a Creative Commons license. Thank you
Speaker 1: everyone for listening. Those nine justices in Washington think could
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Speaker 1: come in. I'm Jordan Ruben and I'm Kimberly Robinson. On
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