An Inconvenient Tennis Court

Oh, to be one of the beautiful people. Climb up on your soapbox and lecture us all about the environment while also becoming very wealthy (marrying money also helps). Yet when the moral preening ends and you need to expand your lavish estate, suddenly your environmental concerns take a back seat.

SELF-proclaimed environmentalist Laurie David is once again paving over protected wetlands in Martha's Vineyard to make improvements to her Chilmark estate.

The Vineyard Gazette reports that David, ex-wife of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Larry David and executive producer of the global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," was fined $900 Tuesday after receiving a citation from the Chilmark conservation commission.

David was cited for violating the Wetlands Protection Act during the construction of a tennis court on her sprawling Chilmark property, when workers installed boards and stones to construct a path to the court.

But David -- who spent weeks on the road with Sheryl Crow in 2007 during their Stop Global Warming College Tour -- let her contractor, Bart Thorpe, take the fall for the violations. "She's obviously a very busy person, and she trusted the contractor," Thorpe told the Gazette. "I inadvertently made a mistake. It's something she had no knowledge of . . . It's a minor thing."

Maybe it wouldn't be such a major deal on the Vineyard if the supposed eco-obsessed celebrity hadn't been cited for the exact same violation four years ago. In 2005, David constructed a stone fire pit, a barbecue area and a children's theater stage in a wetlands area without a permit.

Because of the repeat offense, Chilmark officials fined David and required her to restore the area.

Oh, the horror. Now she may have to be airlifted into her tennis court in order not to soil her sneakers.

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