Edward Norton, the thrice-Oscar-nominated actor, is helping his friend, real estate developer Mike Meldman, win approval for a controversial 600-acre golf resort in the Hamptons.
Norton — president of the US board of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust and a UN goodwill ambassador for biodiversity — is advising Meldman and his Discovery Land Co. on how to prevent water pollution.
“They are friends and they are working together,” one source told me.
The “Fight Club” star is chairman of the board of Baswood, a wastewater treatment company with patented technology to remove nitrogen from runoff.
“Edward grew up on Chesapeake Bay, which has a worse problem with nitrogen pollution than the Hamptons does, so he is passionate about it,” a source said.
Meldman is planning to use the Baswood technology at the Hills, the proposed resort in East Quogue, where he wants to build a golf course with 118 residential units, most of them single-family homes.
The final public hearing for the Hills is in June, but Alec Baldwin already made up his mind, and taped a public-service announcement last year calling the Hills “the biggest and baddest development on Long Island.”
Norton, the son of an environmental lawyer and the grandson of a real estate developer, became friends with Meldman through George Clooney, who is partners with Meldman in Casamigos tequila.
The Yale graduate has credited his father for teaching him “that environmental degradation and ecosystem collapse [is] going to be the most significant threat to civilization.”
Norton told me, “The project represents a much lower density development with much greater retention of open space and ecology than the development zoning allowed for or had originally planned. Without any doubt, a cutting-edge wastewater treatment system gives the community the opportunity to reduce nitrogen contamination of the inland waterways, which is critical.”