Why does he have to make up a story about why hes getting the mud. Is he not allowed to be taking mud from a public place and reselling it, since that's what it sounds like hes doing.
Assuming the oft-cited Delaware River and Palmyra references are genuine, no, Blackburne Rubbing Mud does not own any public property in Palmyra. Blackburne's registered address is 60 miles away. There's about a mile of riverfront on a public park, an industrial warehouse, and some condos.
He's stealing the mud from public property. I'm sure that he'd be arrested if he showed up with an excavator and tried to start a gravel pit on a nature trail, but, it turns out, you can boast on national media about taking dirt from a public park if you only take a couple hundred pounds of it a year and do it sneakily, two bucketfuls at a time.