The Six Stages of Trump’s Resistance to Environmental Regulations

State regulators tried to get the future president to address problems on two golf courses. They got a lesson in how he handles regulatory challenges.

In the grand scheme of his many legal and regulatory conflicts, President Donald Trump’s spats with state regulators over damaged wetlands and excess water use at his New Jersey golf courses seem almost trivial. Trump ultimately was fined $147,000 — less than he banks from a couple of new memberships at the two private country clubs where he was cited for breaking state law. Both disputes were resolved during his presidential campaign and went unnoticed in the press.

Yet, as small as the sum was for a man like Trump, these two episodes are telling, not just because his resistance to oversight seems so disproportionate to the underlying allegations, but also because they provide a revealing anatomy of the five primary stages of Trump response. They could be summarized as Delay, Dissemble, Shift Blame, Haggle and Get Personally Involved. (The elements can be used in any order, more than once.) Often, there’s a sixth stage, too: Offer a job to one of the key players on the opposing side. Trump deployed those tactics again and again in his titanic real estate battles in New York, and his mega-dollar fights over casinos in New Jersey, according to Wayne Barrett’s biography, “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall.”

The stakes may have been smaller on the golf courses, but documents and interviews show the playbook was the same. Historically, Trump’s approach has proved effective, and so it was in New Jersey. The Trump Organization’s repeated infractions at the two clubs lingered unresolved for years. In the end, Trump paid just a fraction of the penalties that state law allows. Then the key regulator, who helped negotiate the generous terms, signed on to a job in the Trump campaign.

The conflicts with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection began on a 500-acre property once owned by disgraced carmaker John DeLorean, which Trump bought for $35 million in 2002. Situated in horse country 40 miles west of Manhattan, the site is now familiar as the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. It’s where President-elect Trump paraded cabinet aspirants before the media; where he plays golf on warm-weather weekends; and where he’s spoken about wanting to be laid to rest after his final deal is done.

Trump transformed the property, building two golf courses, a 25-meter heated pool, tennis courts, clubhouse, fitness center, guest cottages and a helipad. The president has a home at the club; so do Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who were married there. The membership fee has been variously reported at between $100,000 and $350,000.

The violations at Bedminster date back to 2009. At the time, Trump had recently added a second golf course and was making improvements on the first. In the process of reshaping the land — building tee boxes and cart paths and clearing lines of play — his workers chopped down trees, uprooted vegetation and covered open waters. Trump was legally permitted to make changes on the property, but state law required that certain portions, particularly sensitive wetlands, be left untouched.

The Bedminster mini-saga began with what appeared to be a forthright admission of responsibility. On May 29, 2009, Edward Russo, then Trump’s environmental consultant, “self-reported” damage to 4.34 acres of wetlands, open waters and wetland transition areas. In doing so, the Trump Organization was seeking forgiveness under a DEP policy that allows as much as a 100 percent reduction in fines for offenders who voluntarily disclose violations “in a timely manner” and correct them promptly.

Subsequent violations would not be self-reported in a timely manner — indeed, they wouldn’t be self-reported at all — and the series of infractions would take six years to resolve. Indeed, before the first problem was even addressed, state inspectors began discovering more damage during follow-up visits, a problem that continued over the succeeding two years. The violations seemed to multiply faster than the Trump promises to fix them.

It didn’t help that Trump’s representatives sometimes dissembled. In August 2009, for example, a state inspector discovered that trees had “suspiciously” been removed from protected wooded wetland corridors near eight Bedminster golf holes — coincidentally, just where it would be necessary to allow golfers to play through.

Trump’s consultants insisted a state-approved forestry plan allowed the tree-cutting, according to state inspection reports. An examination of the plan showed just the opposite: The plan recommended “no tree harvesting” where workers had cut paths.

New Jersey officials appeared to lose patience. They formally served Trump National with a six-page “Notice of Violation” in May 2011, warning: “ALL UNAUTHORIZED ACTIVITIES MUST CEASE IMMEDIATELY.” The state demanded a prompt plan to avoid further damage and restore the protected areas. DEP officials met again at the course two months later to discuss the situation — only to discover even more “new areas of violation.”

Time kept slipping away and by 2013, Trump’s consultants made a new attempt to avoid responsibility, this time by shifting blame. They fingered two improbable culprits, according to a chronology later prepared by the state: the New Jersey Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Trump’s team insisted, in a May 2013 meeting, that considerable environmental damage had occurred at the direction of those institutions, which were collaborating with Trump to create grassland bird habitat on the property.

Both New Jersey Audubon and U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials dismiss the notion they had anything to do with damaging protected areas. “Any kind of practice we would recommend wouldn’t adversely affect the wetlands,” commented Fish and Wildlife biologist Brian Marsh, who worked on the Bedminster project. “We’re all about doing restoration and enhancing habitat.” In addition, the habitat work hadn’t begun until the fall of 2012 — more than a year after Trump’s club had already been cited for the destruction of wetlands.

Asked about the environmental conflict, Russo said that Trump executives have barred him from commenting publicly. (He ended more than a dozen years as a consultant for the Trump Organization shortly after the presidential election.) Russo self-published a book entitled “Donald J. Trump: An Environmental Hero,” and citing that book, he dismissed the state complaints as “technical paperwork matters.” He characterized what he called efforts to “expand and enhance habitats” at Bedminster as a “tremendous environmental success.” He also acknowledged that environmental groups had nothing to do with any violations and added, “The DEP’s inference that I was in any way blaming Audubon and Fish and Wildlife was not my intent at all.”

Emails to the Trump Organization seeking comment went unanswered.

Nearly four years into the Bedminster spat, the case remained unresolved. In February 2013, state officials drafted a proposed consent order to settle the matter. It cited Trump’s club for damaging nearly 16 acres of protected areas — more than three times as much as the club had reported back in 2009.

Still, it would take another two and a half years to reach a settlement, as the Trump Organization haggled over what damage it could and couldn’t restore to its natural state — the latter because it was deemed essential for the “playability” of the golf course. Said DEP regional enforcement supervisor Peter Keledy: “They were defending every square inch.” To compensate for those sections, Trump offered instead to establish several acres of new wetland and “natural areas” elsewhere on the property.

Meanwhile, the Trump Organization was racking up violations at its second country club, in Colts Neck, near the Jersey Shore. Trump had purchased the 300-acre golf course out of foreclosure in 2008, spent millions to upgrade the property, and renamed it Trump National Colts Neck.

But he had a problem: Irrigating the course properly, in Trump’s view, required far more water than the site was allowed under its state permit. It was already using about twice its annual limit.

In 2011, Trump sought a new permit that would more than triple his yearly water allowance. This was not a popular request at a time when Colts Neck Township had just suffered a drought. Almost all the houses in the community relied on groundwater wells, and some had gone dry the previous summer.

Relations between the township and Trump were prickly. Residents bristled at his proposal to build a landing pad for his helicopter at the club. Colts Neck rejected the helipad but Trump then waged an extended court fight, including appeals, and won. That prompted the township’s mayor to decry his “bully mentality.” For a person who helicoptered into town, Trump seemed very sensitive to noise: He was so irked by a dog whose barking disturbed his golf game that he personally sent a police officer to the home of one neighbor to complain, according to a statement the neighbor gave to the board of adjustment.

After a public hearing, the state granted Trump a new water permit in August 2011 with the big increase he wanted, but only if he met certain conditions. Trump would need to make costly alterations to three irrigation ponds on the course, and construct a fourth. This would assure that the club’s increased water use came from sources that weren’t likely to drain the supply for homeowners. But relying on the ponds would also require the club to periodically draw them down to water the property, leaving a mucky eyesore for golfers.

Clearly unhappy about the situation, Trump got personally involved. In October 2012, he called DEP Commissioner Robert Martin to discuss the matter. What Trump said is unknown, but a letter that Martin sent him afterwards alluded to the discussion: “The location of this golf course with respect to the availability of water supply is very challenging,” Martin wrote Trump. The commissioner urged him to fulfill the conditions spelled out in the water permit. “That may be the best way for you to manage through the costs of this project,” Martin wrote.

Having seemingly not gotten what he wanted, Trump chose to ignore the restrictions. For five consecutive years starting in 2011, Trump National Colts Neck blew past its annual water limits. “Once he was caught going over, it’s not like he stopped and waited until he got more allocation,” said Timothy Anfuso, township planner for Colts Neck. “He kept using the water the whole time.”

The Trump Organization received annual notices of its violations, warning of “substantial monetary penalties” — up to $50,000 per day per offense. In theory, that meant the organization could’ve been fined millions (though “cooperative” violators would unlikely face fines of that magnitude, according to the DEP, since the agency’s goal is to bring violators back into compliance and restore any damage).

The state’s long-running conflicts with the two Trump golf clubs continued into the spring of 2015, when Trump was preparing to announce his candidacy for president. On April 9, Russo, Trump’s environmental consultant, met with John Giordano, the agency’s assistant commissioner for compliance and enforcement, who had overseen both matters since his appointment two years earlier.

The logjam finally came unstuck. Russo promised to take steps to “alleviate” the agency’s “compliance concerns” at both Trump National properties, according to a “Dear Ed” letter summarizing the meeting that Giordano sent afterwards. “The Department appreciates your willingness to voluntarily undertake these actions thereby making an adversarial relationship unnecessary,” Giordano wrote. “I look forward to continuing this cooperative relationship as the most efficient and effective means to address the Department’s concerns.”

Six months later, in October, Giordano and Russo signed a consent order settling the Bedminster issues. It required restoration and improvements to compensate for the damaged areas; placement of markers identifying protected areas; training of golf course staff to avoid future violations; and detailed monitoring reports. The agreement imposed no fines.

The Colts Neck dispute was settled in April 2016. By then, Giordano had moved to another post in the agency, leaving Raymond Bukowski, a career agency official, to finalize a second consent order. This one required the Trump Organization to cut its water use by planting drought-resistant grasses, irrigating less of the course’s acreage, and installing sophisticated irrigation systems. Mostly, Trump Colts Neck would meet its needs by buying rights to use 15 million gallons annually from New Jersey American Water, the state’s largest water utility. (Russo said the Colts Neck golf course “had never complied with the water allocation rules of the State of New Jersey” before Trump bought it. “We saved the club,” he asserted, “and brought all environmental issues including water allocation into compliance.”)

In this case, the DEP did assess a fine: Despite five years of violations, just $294,000 — before cutting the amount in half, to $147,000 (plus $2,790 in interest), as part of the settlement. Bukowski asserts that Trump got no special treatment.

A few months later, in August 2016, Giordano left DEP to join the Trump campaign. He then became deputy general counsel to the presidential transition committee and later joined an administration “landing team” at the Energy Department. Giordano then went to work at a Philadelphia law firm and was subsequently considered for appointment as a U.S. attorney for the region, according to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. That article quoted David Urban, a lobbyist and senior Pennsylvania adviser to the Trump campaign, explaining that Giordano “put a lot of work in for the president.” Giordano told the Inquirer he was “prepared to serve my country and support the president’s agenda, whether that’s in the public or private sector.”

Ultimately, however, another attorney got the appointment. In December, Giordano, now 43, was reported to be considering a run for a New Jersey congressional seat. Recently, he posted a photo of himself with Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a Philadelphia Union League lunch, where Sessions began his speech by recognizing Giordano as a “Trump administration alumnus.”

Giordano did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.

Meanwhile, the agreements with the state did not spell an end to the environmental problems. In April 2017, a year after the Colts Neck settlement, the Trump Organization received yet another notice from New Jersey regulators. Its golf club in Colts Neck had exceeded its monthly water limits five times in 2016. The state and the Trump Organization have not resolved the violation.

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The Fight to Save the EPA

With environmental regulations under attack and EPA budgets being slashed, can the destruction of the agency be prevented?

Like a lot of his fellow EPA professionals, John J. O’Grady is in crisis mode these days.

“You can’t describe the madness that’s going on,” he says. “It’s something that just never would have been expected.”

O’Grady, a 31-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, is president of Council 238 of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing EPA employees around the country. He’s also the national spokesman for Save the U.S. EPA, a campaign organized by the union to protect its workers — and to protect the environment from assault by the Trump administration.

The campaign has a big goal: “We’re trying to prevent the utter destruction of the EPA,” O’Grady tells The Revelator by phone. “We’re hoping there’s something left in the rubble after this particular administration leaves office, but who knows.”

Saving the agency could be a tough task considering the recent actions by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, which include rolling back regulations for clean air and water, recommending the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, removing climate change from official policies (and from EPA web pages), and extending the use of toxic pesticides.

“By his actions, you can tell Scott Pruitt’s not here to make EPA better, not to protect human health and the environment, not to make sure that the child with asthma is protected, but to deconstruct the agency,” O’Grady says.

The deconstruction starts with the plan to slash the number of people working for the EPA. The pending 2018 federal budget aims to slash the agency’s workforce by about 2,200 employees, funded by $79 million worth of buyouts (something that may or may not survive this week’s budget vote). And that’s just the start: Trump’s 2019 budget proposal contains another $35 million for EPA buyouts, or about another 1,000 people.

With that and everything else that’s gone on over the past year, O’Grady thinks a lot of EPA employees are starting to feel discouraged. “I’m very concerned that this administration under Scott Pruitt has created a very toxic environment at EPA,” he says. “Imagine if you’re a great football player and you were brought on by the team to win Super Bowls, and then you’re told, no, you have play soccer. It’s kind of similar. These people come on board EPA because they’re dedicated to protecting human health and the environment. And then they’re basically not allowed to do their jobs, and that’s creating a lot of frustration.”

If many EPA employees do stay frustrated enough to accept buyouts, the agency will be less able — or even unable — to enforce whatever regulations Administrator Pruitt leaves on the books. The EPA has never had the capacity to inspect even a fraction of all potential projects that could affect the land, water or air, but O’Grady says it had enough people on the ground doing their jobs to act as a deterrent. He equates it to the crime-reduction effect of state highway cops: If companies see one “speeder” pulled over, more of them might slow down and comply with environmental regulations.

Beyond that, a shrinking EPA workforce could also result in what O’Grady calls “brain drain and the disappearance of institutional knowledge” — a loss that could take years to reverse.

The damage done to EPA doesn’t just affect things on the federal level. It also spins down to states and local communities. “There’s a lot of talk by Scott Pruitt about ‘cooperative federalism’ and it drives me right up the wall,” O’Grady says. “We’ve been doing that for decades. Sixty-five percent of our EPA budget passes through the agency and goes directly to states, tribal authorities and municipalities. At the same time this administration is talking about pushing cooperative federalism, they’re cutting the funding that goes to the states, tribal authorities and municipalities.” That’s all made worse, he says, because at least 30 states are currently under budgetary restraints and depend on the EPA for technical assistance, scientific expertise and enforcement. “They don’t have excess funds to support additional environmental duties.”

So what’s Save the U.S. EPA doing to try to turn this around? “We’re trying to speak out as much as possible,” O’Grady says. They’ve created alliances with many environmental groups and they’re asking people to write to their elected officials. “Stay on them,” he says. “Make sure they know this is a critical issue and that they need to act accordingly.”

With all that’s going on, what gives O’Grady even a small amount of hope? “November 2018,” he says without hesitation, pointing out that several Republican representatives are up for reelection in potentially tight races, possibly enough to lessen that party’s control of all three houses of government. “I know some people are predicting a sea change,” he says. “That would be wonderful. I’d be happy if they just reduce the margin.”

Ironically, O’Grady thinks the threats to EPA are made possible by the environmental successes we’ve had over the past few decades. “People in America look at our air and they get the tap water for drinking and it all looks clean,” he says. “People should be concerned about their children and their grandchildren. They should be concerned about the quality of the water that comes out of their tap. And you know, when they take that walk in the woods, they should be assured that the land hasn’t been used for some kind of dumping. Before EPA came on board, there was a place called the Valley of the Drums. It was a valley, literally, where companies just threw their drums of spent chemicals. That’s what we’re going to see again, if this doesn’t improve.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Life Before the EPA

RIP Sudan, the Last Male Northern White Rhino

The most famous rhino in the world has died, leaving behind two aging females and a hole in our world.

This is the face of extinction.

Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), died Monday at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. He was 45 years old and is survived by just two females, 27-year-old Najin and 17-year-old Fatu, neither of which are capable of breeding due to their own various health problems.

Perhaps the most famous rhino in the world, Sudan’s aging visage has graced magazine covers and newspaper articles around the world. In most of those photos he was seen accompanied by rifle-bearing guards that stood guard around the clock to protect him and his family from the threat of poachers, which continue to plague rhino populations wherever they still live.

Most recently the dating app Tinder called Sudan “the most eligible bachelor in the world,” a promotional effort that raised thousands of dollars for the conservation effort at Ol Pejeta.

“We on Ol Pejeta are all saddened by Sudan’s death,” Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta’s CEO, said in a press release late Monday night. “He was a great ambassador for his species and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity. One day, his demise will hopefully be seen as a seminal moment for conservationists worldwide.”

The northern white rhino’s road to extinction was a long and painful one. The subspecies, which once roamed several nations in central Africa, were heavily poached throughout the first part of the 20th century, mostly to feed the rampant desire for their horns, which have been erroneously linked to traditional health treatments in China.

By 1997 the wild population of northern white rhinos had dropped to just 25 animals, all in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nine years later that population had fallen to just four lonely animals. Poachers, emboldened and enabled by war and conflict, probably got them, too. Repeated searches in 2007, 2008 and 2011 failed to find any evidence that they had survived.

That wasn’t quite the end, though. Eight aging, non-breeding northern white rhinos remained, all living in zoos: two at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and six at Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic.

In 2009 four of the Dvůr Králové rhinos were flown to Ol Pejeta in Kenya, where it was hoped that the feel of their native sun on their backs and earth beneath their feet would inspire them to start breeding and save their species from extinction, possibly by mating and producing hybrid young with related southern white rhinos (C. s. simum).

The simple act of returning to Africa helped immensely. The animals were in “pretty poor state” when they first arrived, but “within six months of their being here their skin had improved, their toenails had improved, the whole condition of the animal had completely changed,” Richard Vigne told me in 2014. “They became semi-wild very quickly.”

And yes, there were some mating attempts, but no pregnancies ensued. Meanwhile, the last captive rhinos at San Diego and Dvůr Králové slowly passed away from old age, as did one of the four at Ol Pejeta, a male named Suni, who expired in 2014.

Now Sudan has joined the list of the dead. In all likelihood, Najin and Fatu will not be far behind.

That doesn’t mean Ol Pejeta or the worldwide conservation community have given up. For the past few years, scientists have collected sperm from the (now gone) male northern white rhinos and anticipate trying to extract eggs from the females at some point later this year. The hope is that someday that genetic material could be used to implant a fertile egg into a rhino of a different species, resulting in the (re)birth of a northern white.

That possibility of that plan working, like all such de-extinction attempts, still seems remote, but at least it still exists.

And so, for now, do the last two female northern white rhinos. Now they, like Sudan before them, are the faces of this species slowly fading away into extinction.

Previously in Extinction Countdown:

Climate Goes Viral

Disease outbreaks could be coming your way — our interactive map shows how you could be affected.

You don’t have to wait decades to witness the impacts of climate change in the United States. Just ask people like Mark Elwin, a carpenter in Maine whose life was devastated after he was infected by a blood parasite.

The infection caused severe fever and pain that required Elwin to be hospitalized, and eventually left him unable to return to his job. He’s one of thousands of Americans who have already become victims of the tick-borne diseases outbreaks currently spreading across the Northeast because of warming temperatures.

As average temperatures across the United States and the rest of the world climb, disease-carrying ticks and insects have started spreading farther north, reaching places where winters were previously too long and cold for them to survive. Tick populations in wintery Maine, for instance, have exploded, causing cases of some diseases to multiply by 30 times in just the past decade.

Scientists have predicted that climate change is creating prime conditions for the spread of insects and contagions — bringing cases of plague from memories of medieval history to California’s Silicon Valley and tropical blood parasites to the plains of Nebraska. Some Texans could even become allergic to eating meat as a result of tick bites.

Despite these predictions President Trump has slashed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget to fight global epidemics by 80 percent. Although most of this funding goes to efforts in other countries, critics say the cut leaves the United States vulnerable to diseases that could be introduced to the country.

Speaking to the Boston Globe, Daniel Brooks, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nebraska, explained: ‘‘The warmer the planet gets, the more pathogens and vectors from the tropics and subtropics are going to move into the temperate zones. Countries such as the United States tend to have a false sense of security, but vectors and pathogens don’t understand international boundaries. You can’t just put up a fence to keep them out.’’

How could this affect you? Below, explore the counties where scientists predict 10 key diseases could spread or worsen because of climate change.
(Mobile users: click counties to select; desktop users: mouse over for results. The darker the county, the greater the disease risk.)

Get a closer look: Enter your ZIP code for more information about disease risks in your town or city.

Remember, these are just 10 of many possible diseases, and diseases that are already established in your area may not show up in this search.

Potential disease risks nationwide:

Sources and methods:

The data used to visualize national vector-borne disease risks due to climate change were derived from a compilation of predictive maps from suitable studies found through a literature search involving geospatial modeling of habitat suitability of vectors and/or pathogens. These studies utilized a range of internationally accepted climate models by CSIRO, Hadley and CCCma, for example, which further utilized a range of climate change scenarios/Representative Concentration Pathways established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The predictive time scale of these studies ranged from the years 2020 to 2080. Geographic scales and units of study ranged from counties to meters. Once identified, the published maps were georeferenced and areas with spreading and/or intensifying disease risks were isolated and used to build a compilation of general future disease risks to the country, visualized here. Considering the range of attributes used to build these predictive models and maps, the visuals presented here do not represent a single future scenario but paint a broad picture of possible future threats.

View supplemental information with the full list of mapping data and disease information sources here.

Tools used to generate map data were ESRI ArcMap 10.5.1 and Adobe Photoshop CC 2017.

Photo credits:

Ixodes scapularis by Patrick Randall CC BY-NC-SA.

Aedes aegypti  from E. A. Goeldi (1905) Os Mosquitos no Pará. Memorias do Museu Goeldi. Pará, Brazil., Figure 2 from Plate 1 in the Appendix CC0.

Lutzomyia longipalpis from Ray Wilson, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – (2009) PLoS Pathogens Issue Image – Vol. 5(8) August 2009. PLoS Pathog 5(8): ev05.i08. CC BY.

Anopheles quadrimaculatus by Edward McCellan, USCDCP CC0.

Lone star tick by CDC CC0.

Oropsylla Montana flea by Kat Masback CC BY-SA.

Triatoma gerstaeckeri by Drriss & Marrionn CC BY-NC-SA.

Culex pipiens by Alvesgaspar CC BY-SA.