Monday, 16 June
It's the start of the second week of the inquiry and today we heard from a couple of Mr Trump's environmental experts. This meant that at one point the SNH team sitting next to us clearly outnumbered the members of the public listening to the proceedings. However, the level of scrutiny doesn't seem to make much difference to the ever shifting goal posts that are starting to characterise this inquiry.
Last week we found out that Mr Trump wasn't content with building a word-class golf course - it had to be the best in the world and in order to do that he must have the SSSI, without it he didn't want any consent at all. We then found out he had to build 500 houses as part of the development in order to pay for the golf course and that the cost of building the houses accounted for a significant part of the development value. When these looked like becoming a bit of a liability we were told that they might not be built straight away, or in fact for many years and that Mr Trump was going to fund the construction of the golf course himself. We were told this was an outline application but that they had a detailed plan for the championship golf course which was just about perfect, it had to be in the SSSI and provided enough information to allow a decision to be made.
Today we found out that although they've provided a detailed layout for the golf course they'll move it around once they get their permission to make sure it's just what's needed. Given that we also found out that all the design changes made so far were made to benefit golf and not the environment this doesn't fill you full of hope.
Listening to some of the longest answers I've every heard at a public inquiry we eventually found out that, and I should stress it took the best part of a day to winkle this out of the witness, stabilising a dynamic sand dune by covering it in vegetation and turning it into a golf course will probably mean that it's not dynamic any more. Given that it's designated because it's dynamic this is not a good thing. After about 4 hours getting that sorted out we had a brief opportunity to hear from the habitat expert working for the developer who is very happy to point out what a valuable and important site this is and how much it will be damanged by the proposal. Phew - however, he also seems to think that the problems can be overcome by digging up some of the more vulnerable bits and planting them elsewhere. Translocation is a tricky business, but when part of the translocation is onto the dynamic thing you want to protect it starts to err on the side of lunacy.
After another day sitting in the black, windowless, over-heated mini-stadium that is the inquiry room I realised that if I didn't see the outside I'd go mad. So tonight I went for a walk along the beach north of Aberdeen from Balmedie Country Park towards the Menie Estate. I've been before but tonight it was windswept, empty, fabulous and
just what was needed to brace myself for the next three weeks.
Finally, I heard from colleagues that TIGLs latest media campaign centred on a letter from one Edward R. Russo, who describes himself as "the resident tree hugger" at Trump's National Golf Club at Bedminster in New Jersey. We understand that Mr Russo is employed by Mr Trump, and as such it's nice that he wrote an open letter backing up his bosses environmental credentials. I have to admit knowing little about the New Jersey site, which according to the letter has been changed for the better by Mr Trump's care and attention, but then Mr Russo clearly knows little about the site at Menie. His contention that "to protect these dunes, environmental stewards should have planted grass all over the surface when they were first exposed" displays yet again the failure to grasp the idea that these dunes are meant to be mobile. Bit of an own goal there I think.
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