Trump golf course in Scotland repeatedly broke sewage contamination limits

The clubhouse that serves Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course has breached sewage contamination limits 14 times since 2019 according to data obtained by Unearthed. 

Trump, who arrived in the UK this week for his second official state visit, opened a new course at the Trump International Golf Links luxury resort on the Aberdeenshire coast during a trip to Scotland in July. The course was billed as “one of the most environmentally friendly and sustainable courses ever built”.

Samples of sewage discharges from the clubhouse’s waste water system exceeded limits on contaminants in three of the last seven years, data from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), released to Unearthed through freedom of information law, shows.

Samples were recorded as being “non-compliant” nine times in 2019, four times in 2024 and once in the first half of this year. No data is available for 2020, 2021 or 2022, due to a cyber attack. No breaches were recorded in 2023. There is no evidence that these incidents caused environmental harm.

“From the outset, SEPA has insisted on a particularly intense level of monitoring of waste water management at the site,” Sarah Malone, executive vice president of Trump International, Scotland, told Unearthed. “Any exceedances have been very rare,” she added, pointing out that SEPA has repeatedly renewed the clubhouse’s licence to operate a private waste water system.

This system treats effluent before releasing it into the ground through perforated pipes on raised gravel beds. Sampling takes place at a point located after the treatment works, but before the gravel beds. 

Trump International has commissioned separate analysis of the samples in addition to SEPA’s, Malone told Unearthed. “The specialist environmental engineers we commissioned to undertake a parallel monitoring exercise contested SEPA’s findings on the occasional minor infractions.

Those matters about methodology and sampling remain a matter of discussion between the engineers and SEPA,” she said.

“We expect better”

SEPA’s data shows that samples exceeded limits for suspended solid particles, ammoniacal nitrogen, and biomechanical oxygen demand – a measurement of the amount of oxygen required by microbes to digest organic matter.

Eight instances were “upper tier” breaches, which are described by the agency as “extreme events which have the potential to cause immediate and serious environmental harm” and can trigger enforcement action. 

“While we expect better performance, our risk-based assessment concluded the environmental impact in these instances was minimal,” a spokesperson for the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency told Unearthed. “The treated effluent passes through a soakaway system after the sampling point, providing further natural filtration before entering the ground. The soakaway significantly reduces the risk of the effluent impacting the environment.”

The Aberdeenshire resort includes an area of sand dunes that was formerly part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), a protected status for rare and vulnerable habitats. However the resort’s construction led to the site becoming so damaged that, in 2020, Scotland’s nature agency rescinded protected status from the portion of the SSSI that overlapped with the golf course.

A spokesperson for Trump International said that this was often reported “out of context”. “Far from causing environmental damage we are extremely proud of the environmental contribution at our golf courses. Extensive native grasses have been planted, many hectares of indigenous vegetation have been translocated, and new wetland and dune-slack habitats are flourishing,” Malone told Unearthed.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change told Unearthed: “The original vision for Trump’s golf resort was based on a disregard for the environment and these shocking revelations show that this has continued into its operations… It is a blight on the Scottish landscape, and the damage that it is creating to the environment demonstrates that the Trump Organisation is not fit to host The Open Championship.”

President Trump has been lobbying Whitehall officials to support proposals for the 2028 Open championship – the world’s oldest major golf championship – to be held at the Turnberry course, sources told the Guardian earlier this year.