Trump's golf-course plan stumbles over sand dunes

BALMEDIE, Scotland — The chilly, wind-whipped dunes and grasslands of the Scottish coast may have been the birthplace of golf, but that hasn't been much help to Donald Trump and his plans to create what he says will be the world's best golf course here.

Don't even start with the old Menie estate being said to be haunted by someone called the Green Lady. That's chump change compared to a nasty battle that has pitted local boosters and Scotland's new independence-minded government against those who complain that the New York real-estate magnate is bullying his way across the foundations of Scottish environmental law.

At issue are Balmedie's sand dunes, a major part of which are protected as a "site of special scientific significance" under Scottish environmental law, removing them from any possibility of development.

The battle has led to the firing of the local infrastructure committee chairman who rejected the project and recriminations against all seven committee members who voted no.

It also has sunk the Scottish government in a "sleaze" quagmire. After newly elected Scottish National Party ministers rescued the project by declaring it a matter of national significance, newspapers revealed that party officials had held meetings with senior Trump Organization officials on the eve of the decision.

"The pressure that was put on the council was absolutely unprecedented," said Martin Ford, the committee chairman who was ousted after casting a tiebreaking vote against Trump.

Most people in Aberdeen, the North Sea oil town a few miles south of Balmedie, are excited about the Trump International Golf Links, hoping it will provide a solid new economic underpinning when the oil runs out.

Boost to economy

The project with its two championship golf courses, 450-room hotel, 500 villas and 1,000 vacation homes is expected to bring a $400 million jolt to the local economy and up to $100 million a year thereafter.

"I'm 110 percent for it," said Bob Abercrombie, a 56-year-old native of Aberdeen.

"It's going to employ a lot of people. And there's plenty of lovely, lonely places for people who like to go hill walking all over the place. It's a strip of sand, and there's miles and miles ... of sand out there."

The sand is the key. It's commonly believed that golf got its first foothold in the grassy sand dunes of Scotland, famed for its coastal "links" courses.

But a coalition of environmental groups claims the dunes comprise one of the few remaining mobile dune systems in Britain. It has urged the project be scaled back to eliminate the nine holes sitting among the dunes, a feature Trump officials insist is the project's centerpiece.

"What we're talking about doing is simply planting grass, which would stop this highly mobile sand from traveling northerly, where it has essentially been gobbling up farmland like a giant sand slug," countered Neil Hobday, Trump's project director.

Environmental activists and others say parts of the dune system date back 4,000 years.

"To him, it's a blight because it gets in the way of his golf course," said Don Banks, who lives in an old lodge house on the edge of Trump's property. "If Trump is allowed to build on this one just because he says he wants it and my money talks, it undermines the whole system of environmental protection in Scotland."

This is what the local infrastructure committee had in mind when it rejected the Trump application Nov. 29.

In addition to being called traitors, "numpties" (airheads) and "neeps" (turnips) in the local paper, committee members who vetoed the application have faced personal hostility. Debra Storr said a woman arrived at her front door and began shouting obscenities, then shoved her.

In hands of government

Immediately after the vote, the Scottish government seized control of the project, even as the Aberdeenshire council scheduled an emergency meeting to remove Ford from his job. A hearing officer, and ultimately the Scottish minister of finance, John Swinney, will now make the final determination.

Since then, it has been revealed that Swinney was a guest at a Trump resort only days before the government "called in" the project and placed it in his hands for decision, and that the Scottish government's chief planner, Jim McKinnon, had two Trump employees in his office Dec. 4, the day the project was called in.

Earlier last month, Scotland's three opposition parties moved to call in for questioning First Minister Alex Salmond, head of the Scottish National Party, who also held meetings with Trump's people.

Now, the story is no longer just Trump's project but the Scottish National Party's dreams of Scottish independence from Britain. Salmond's determination to generate tangible economic plums during the party's maiden voyage in government, ahead of a hoped-for referendum on independence, has been a major factor in the campaign to lure Trump, analysts say.

And for some of those in Balmedie, it remains not political but highly personal. For Michael Forbes, a fisherman and quarry worker who has lived in the middle of what is now Trump's property for 30 years, it's about seeing the home to which he has affixed a plaque that says "Paradise" turned into a golf course.

Forbes refused Trump's offer of $750,000 and a job for life.

Now, his ramshackle home, the prefab annex his mother lives in and assorted broken-down farm equipment will be a picturesque island in the midst of the Trump resort.

"They think money can buy everything," Forbes said, "but it can't buy me."