Fore! Archie Bunker on the Links. Trump Impacts the Potomac River, and Local Residents.

This green thing has really gotten me. When reading Hedrick Belin’s opinion piece in The Washington Post last week about Donald Trump’s vision for a golf course remake along the Potomac, I was surprised by how deep my feeling of regret and disgust was at what the over-the-top billionaire did to a length of shoreline along the Potomac River.

Back in early 2009, Trump closed on the purchase of the 800-acre Lowes Island Golf Club in Potomac Falls (Sterling), Virginia. Of his plans for remaking the re-named club, Trump National Golf Club, Trump told Washington Post reporters: “There will be nothing like it. I already own the best ones, so I know.” It was reported that Trump had hired golf course designer Tom Fazio to remake the two 18-hole championship courses “with plans to maximize the site’s natural beauty”.

In Trump’s mind, what was required, as reported in “Leesburg Today,” was hiring “artists with bulldozers” to cut down “more than 460 trees along the shores of the Potomac,” as noted in Belin’s piece. (Belin is president of the Potomac Conservancy.)

On Fazio’s website there are listings of the 100 best this-n-that golf courses his firm has designed. In Golf magazine’s “America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses” for 2015-16, Fazio claims more than any other designer. But, Trump National at Sterling is not on the list. So much for artists with bulldozers. Nor is it included in any of Golfweek‘s “Top” or “Best” lists reported by Fazio.

Of Trump’s vision for the club’s golfers, Belin says: “The protective trees and shrubs that line our local river and streams form an unparalleled natural filtration system. In addition to stabilizing the shoreline with its deep root systems, the green filter strip running along the Potomac substantially reduces topsoil erosion and helps to prevent chemical pollution and farm run-off from flowing into the river below.”

But Trump, perhaps admiring Washington football club owner Daniel Snyder for clear-cutting 140 trees on national parkland property between his mega-mansion and the Potomac, apparently prefers to dominate the ecosystem just the same. For a relaxing view that leaves 1.5 miles of shoreline without a single tree.

The 1.5 mile treeless gap is the longest between Harper’s Ferry, WVA, and the American Legion Bridge connecting Arlington, VA, to Washington, DC. That’s a distance of 55 miles where no other piece of shoreline has been so pillaged. By the overhead view left, note the curve in the Potomac at Trump National. With a river flow eastward to the Chesapeake Bay, it’s not hard to imagine a lot of erosion pressure on the shoreline there.

In a Washingtonian blog post late last year, Belin said: “There’s a big drinking straw that goes into the Potomac on that side of the river just down stream from the golf course. It’s our drinking water.” The “big drinking straw” consists of 36″ wide encased ductile iron pipe suction lines with line shaft pumps housed in a 5,500 sq. ft. shoreline facility designed to look like a proper Virginia residence.

It’s also not hard to imagine the amount of fertilizer that will be used to keep the links and greens unnaturally green. Where would that fertilizer run off to? And from adjacent properties. Yeah. Just upstream of the “big drinking straw.”

Let Belin close out this post-

“Great leadership requires wise decision-making. Trump missed out on an opportunity to build a world-class golf course, protect the environment and be a good neighbor and responsible member of our community.

“He could have worked collaboratively with local environmental organizations and community leaders to protect some of the existing forest, strategically plant new sycamores and other erosion-resistant trees and create a golf course that would have won design awards for its innovative landscaping.

“He could have modeled the welcome and growing trend in this area of property owners, developers and business leaders who adopt smart planning solutions that embrace economic growth and protect our natural resources.”

P.S.  I wrote several weeks ago about an environmentally sensitive golf course design solution here; a change agent, if you will, in the golfing realm. Incidentally, Trump is an avowed climate change denier.