The Center for Public Integrity

Salvatore J. Cangiano enjoys a reputation as a shrewd land speculator and developer, one who isn’t shy about pressing his ownership rights through litigation — “I’m very competitive” — or, perhaps, just by sheer force of will. And pretty much all those descriptors were on display in the rough-and-tumble struggle that ended with him in possession of Wheatland Farms in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Consider this: As Cangiano prepared to go to settlement on the purchase of the spectacular 549-acre property in spring 2005, according to court records, he was unknowingly recorded in a conversation discussing his concerns about contractual obligations the sellers had made, including an obligation to host weddings at the Wheatland Manor House.

“Hey, anybody gives me a hard time, I go there and lock the buildings. I’ll put everybody off the property. I deal New Jersey style. I’ll just lock everybody out. Nobody is allowed here. Go sue me.”

When the Wheatland deal crumbled and dissolved into litigation, Cangiano was asked about the conversation under oath: “I don’t know what ‘New Jersey style’ means. I really don’t know what that means. I deal honestly, morally, and ethically. That’s how I deal. I hope everybody else would.”

Recently, in an interview, Cangiano laughed when asked about the conversation saying: “That was a levity.” Just two guys joking around, he explained.

However, when Cangiano’s attorney asked Ava Abramowitz, the former co-owner of Wheatland Farms, what she understood “New Jersey style” to mean, she testified: “Ask Jimmy Hoffa what ‘New Jersey style’ means. We were petrified. We did not know how to handle this situation.”

“Are you saying you thought Mr. Cangiano was threatening to kill you or your husband?” Cangiano’s attorney asked.

“No,” she replied. “I am not saying that at all. I’m just saying I don’t even think of New Jersey style. He’s a man who does.”

Investment banks and real estate developers aren’t the only ones reeling from the ups and downs of the economy. A dramatic case in point: the National Audubon Society’s 950-acre bird sanctuary on the Chesapeake Bay, which is quite suddenly facing an uncertain future due to its unique financial structure. Society officials say they’re committed to assuring that the spectacular site remains undeveloped, but the troubling bottom line is that they cannot keep the property because the funding needed to maintain it has collapsed.

The land was effectively given to the Society in 1997 by Jean Ellen duPont Shehan, a member of the affluent duPont family. But for Audubon officials, a crucial part of the deal was a promised flow of funds — about $500,000 per year — to maintain the property. Shehan established two trusts providing Audubon the money to manage the sanctuary and maintain its seven houses, several outbuildings, and over 10 miles of roads and trails; the trusts also were also designed to pay the $40,000-a-year property tax bill.

“We took the property from Mrs. Shehan and the family with the understanding that a management endowment would accompany it,” said Henry Tepper, the National Audubon Society’s vice president for Eastern State programs. “It was pretty clear from the onset… that we did not have the means to maintain it,” and without the endowment, “we would have to sell the property.”

The trusts were heavily invested in tech stocks, which took a beating in 2001 and were just barely able to provide the needed cash.

Bruce Stone, Shehan’s attorney, said it became clear in late 2007 that the trusts she had arranged to provide the annual endowment were going broke.

“Audubon is a great organization, but unfortunately we just ran out of money.” Stone said. And so the society began looking for a buyer for the sanctuary, south of St. Michaels on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, in 2008, after being informed of the situation.

Deep in the foothills, miles above California’s Sacramento Valley, the 640-acre home of the Cortina Band of Wintun Indians lies empty except for six houses, a graveyard, and the spot where the band’s ceremonial roundhouse once stood.

A sign at the gate warns off outsiders, but on a recent afternoon there is no one inside to drive visitors away. All but 20 or so of the band’s 160 members live elsewhere. Most are scattered throughout California and the West. Some moved as far away as Tennessee and Canada.

The land is beautiful, but it’s hard to live on and harder yet to make a living from. Electric lights replaced lanterns only a few years back. Phone service cuts in and out. In summer, the communal well dries up.

Hilly, parched, and carpeted with prickly star thistle, the Cortina land isn’t much good for farming or running cattle. It isn’t good for much, but two outside developers have found a way to make the Cortina land pay.

In 2007, the band began leasing nearly 70 percent of its land to be used for a landfill by a joint project between a Canadian venture capital company and a California waste hauler. The company plans to truck in 1,500 tons of municipal waste a day and bury it deep in Cortina’s canyons.

The Cortina landfill is one among dozens of projects across the country for which developers and Native Americans are using Indian sovereignty to bypass state and local regulations and build projects that other communities shun – projects ranging from landfills, big box stores and a massive power plant to casinos, motorcycle tracks and billboards. Neighbors are paying the price.

In California, the Cortina tribal leadership calls its landfill deal a financial savior, but like the people who live near other controversial Indian land projects, the farmers and ranchers who live below the Cortina land, and some tribal members, fear the landfill will leak and ruin the local environment.