This is a series on the parallels of misinformation both locally and nationally that led me to write Systems out of Balance.
The applicants for the Yale Farm Golf Course made some tweaks to their application in response to state and federal agency push back during 2004. They restated their slope gradient criteria for overlaying the golf course but, quite remarkably, their golf course layout still failed to meet their own criteria. Using a bogus criteria when they thought no one would catch it was one thing; they should have known by now that there was at least one person out there paying close attention to their design criteria. Success can get to people’s heads.
I first felt deflated after the DEP meeting in early 2005 that announced they would be granting tentative approval. I always assumed that the applicants would get a golf course in the end. As I mentioned at a hearing early on, with 780 acres to work with they ought to be able to construct a 100 acre golf course with minimum impacts. They just could not get the precise golf course they wanted, nor the housing that they wanted. Yet their application tweaks still failed to meet their own criteria for avoiding steep slopes, they still were misinforming the public, and they seemingly were about to get away with it.
I wrote up a report reviewing their revised application and stated, in somewhat scathing tones, that they failed to meet their own reinvented criteria, and that this was a signal that the state and federal agencies needed to be extra vigilant in their future dealings with the applicants. Meanwhile, hydrologists hired by both intervenors were busy at undermining the claims that the golf course would not impact the streams and the wells in the area. The hydrologists were the ones that turned the tide this time in stalling an eminent approval by the state, but my report would provide an unexpected opportunity.
The North Canaan Inland/Wetlands commission had to review the application a second time in 2005, thanks to a successful appeal by the intervenors. The former head of the commission had to recuse himself for the second round. Additional factors suggested that the Yale Farm developers might not have as smooth sailing this time around. Initially, I thought the press tended to favor the applicants, but by this time the press had grown increasingly hostile. I won’t speculate too much on the reasons for this, outside of the simple observation that the developer was a person who would not shake my hand when we first met.
I presented for the first time as an official representative of HVA to this town commission. My organization was still leery about me being controversial (or boring) and they requested I limit my presentation to 5 minutes. I went a bit over that, both on my own accord and due to the fact that the commission kept asking me questions. I had peaked their interest with my data on slope gradients, something they never got to see the first time around. They also found fascinating the statistical proof that the golf course favored being overlaid on environmentally sensitive areas rather than avoiding them.
There were two holes in particular, the original 11th and 12th holes in the southwest corner of Yale Farm, that could not be placed in a more damaging spot over the entire 780 acres of property. These were “signature” holes, providing a spectacular view over Canaan Valley. They also crossed Hollow Brook, exceeded 15% slope gradients and coincided with some of the worst soils for development. The North Canaan commissioners looked over my maps the same way Doug Hoskins did. You could almost see thought balloons bubbling up from their heads thinking “These guys are trying to BS us!”
I stated to the commission that the applicants have a right to a golf course, they just don’t have a right to this golf course with holes 11 and 12. The commission asked me where else on the North Canaan side I would place holes 11 and 12. I pointed to a vast space in the northwest corner, a space that had been targeted for housing in the original plans. However, I knew this was not the perfect alternative, due to some wetlands in the area, and I suggested that the best alternatives would have to include Norfolk. That interchange, along with my recent report to federal agencies, provided a perfect sequence of events.
At the next public hearing the applicants claimed to the Inlands/Wetlands commission that altering holes 11 and 12 to the northwest corner would have “severe environmental impacts.” I missed that meeting, but it was because I was hard at work for the federal government. In response to the report cautioning agencies to be vigilant about the data they received from the applicants, the federal agencies emailed me with a request that I come up with an alternative layout to the golf course. I emailed back stating the obvious: that the applicants would discredit anything I come up with because I’m not a golf course architect. The feds replied that did not matter to them.
That was an answer I needed to hear not just for the sake of designing a golf course, but for writing Systems out of Balance. We were being misinformed about economics, but I’m not an economist. We were being misinformed about politics, but I’m not a Constitutional scholar. We were being misinformed about our culture, but I’m not an ethnographer. Who am I to write about stuff that does not correspond to my field of expertise?
The answer was, for both designing a golf course and writing the book, that I am an empiricist who knows a thing or two about good and bad data, about information and misinformation, which transcends fields of expertise. I knew my limits in regards to the golf course; I made clear that I could not design tees, greens, fairways or any of the fine details of a hole. However, I could determine the layouts for a hole based on a given set of geographic criteria. Indeed, it appeared I was more competent for this than world class golf course architects.
By the time of the third public hearing I had produced my layout, which I presented to federal agencies and to the North Canaan commission. For good measure I avoided both the southwest corner and northwest corner where the applicants claimed there would be “severe environmental impacts.” I calculated some statistics for contrasting my layout with theirs. My layout met their criteria better than their own in virtually every stated category, and even a few not stated (such as longest distance from a green to the next tee). My layout also played longer in yardage, so the applicants could always shrink it down in case they wanted to be even more “environmentally sensitive.” The assignment was easy enough to do for a GIS specialist, if you allow yourself to place holes where proposed housing once existed. Apparently the applicants could never get themselves over this hurdle.
The applicants fired a salvo that I was a loose cannon imposing myself where I was not wanted. In response to that I produced the email from the feds actually requesting me to come up with alternatives. That was game, set and match. North Canaan and Norfolk are small towns. You hear things. What we were hearing from quite reliable sources was that the North Canaan Inland/Wetland commission, judged at the start as being the most sympathetic to the application, was going to deny the application without prejudice, sending the applicants back to the drawing table to redesign some of their holes.
The commission never had the opportunity to decide one way or the other. At the meeting where they were supposed to make their decision the applicants withdrew their application, with the explanation that the feds had required them to move holes 11 and 12 and they would be back once that was done. The application process was to go on for four more years still, but they never would be coming back to the North Canaan Inland/Wetland commission.
Meanwhile, I had another project to keep me busy. My research for Systems out of Balance had started in January, with that first economics course on CD. My writing started the following fall. Both research and writing would stretch on as long as The Yale Farm Golf Course application.
