How Green's Your Golf Course?

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“I am not aware of any golf-course-specific data that would demonstrate that golf courses are doing a much better job (of irrigation control and pesticide/herbicide applications),” says Bill Marshall, surface water runoff section chief for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in Rancho Cordova. Allayaud did admit to golf becoming more sensitive to the issue. “Golf designers do a better job with courses that control runoff, and the superintendents are better on water usage, but what is the impact?” Allayaud asks. “I have to ask, what’s in the water when it comes off the courses, and does it get to, say, the American River?”

One Big Filter

It doesn’t take a degree in ecology to know that water moves. It flows. It drips. It floods. It seeps. More than anything, water carries nourishment to replenish, and it carries nutrients as well as unwanted chemicals.

“We monitor all our wells every three months,” says Joel Blaker, superintendent at Old Greenwood and Coyote Moon in Truckee. “And our water cannot just drain into a body of water. It has to go through a series of sumps, or collection basins, that purify the water before it reaches the ponds on the course. Turf grass is one of Mother Nature’s best filters. Spill diesel fuel on grass, and eventually grass cleans it up.

“Let me put it this way,” Blaker says. “All the pollutants that come off the streets in the housing development — all the oils and dirt from cars — all that gets channeled into the golf course to get purified.”

Dillon points out one other key factor in golf’s stewardship: “It’s a business,” he says. “There are costs to course maintenance.” So managers know that indiscriminate application of anything — fertilizers, water, herbicide — leads to more problems. Take fertilizer, which brings nutrients to grass. Not enough of it makes the course look bad and will make it less attractive to play, hurting business.  Fertilizer also increases thatch, which can host insects and disease, and that increases maintenance costs.

Purity In, Purity Out

Allayaud still raises the question, who’s doing the checking? At Old Greenwood, the Lahonton Water Board, that’s who. And in the water board world, Lahonton takes this approach: The snow and the rain come to us pure, and it will leave pure.

“We have put stringent requirements on golf courses up here,” says Lahonton Assistant Director Bob Dodds. “The receiving water in the Sierra is extremely high quality, very clean, and thus it is much more susceptible to be impacted by small amounts of nutrients or herbicides. It’s pure, and we want to keep it pure.”

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