How Green's Your Golf Course?

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Bruce Warden, an environmental scientist for the LWB, oversees most of the courses in the Lake Tahoe basin as well as the Resort at Squaw Creek, which might have the tightest environmental controls anywhere in the country. Designed by Robert Trent Jones II, the course sits atop what had been the parking lot for the 1960 Winter Olympics.

Over time it had turned into a soppy waste area. Thanks to golf, it now exists as vast expanses of wetlands, intersected by turf grass marked here and there by sticks with color patches of cloth flapping in the wind. All of it is connected by wooden bridges, and golfers cannot enter the wetlands.

Since many of the people in that valley get their water from wells, the course is extremely limited in what it can use in its applications, including common material to eradicate snow fungus. Dandelions and red clover must be removed by hand.

Closer to Lake Tahoe, things are just as tight. But Warden credits the superintendents and maintenance crews from the five courses in the basin for getting together to trade tips. One course found that by replacing its old irrigation system, it watered 20 percent less. At Lake Tahoe Golf Club, holes whose greens lie near creeks or waterways get liquid fertilizer applications, Warden says. Less is applied, but more applications are required through the summer.

“Pellet spreaders are not allowed near water,” Warden points out. “So fertilizer gets applied by spray directly onto the leaf to avoid any potential contamination. It’s more labor intensive but very effective.”

Warden adds that his studies tend to confirm what Blankinship and Blaker have found. Around the Lake Tahoe basin, housing lots near courses bring premium prices, but they also bring more runoff into the ecosystem. Water from homes settles through courses and ends up in wells and tends to be cleaner.

At Coyote Moon in central Truckee, Blaker checks the water that enters on the west end of the course and checks it again where it leaves on the east end. “It’s cleaner after it leaves us,” he notes. The runoff dumps into the Truckee River, which heads into Nevada.

Different water boards have different standards. While Blaker is checking his runoff every 90 days, Samuelson isn’t mandated to check his runoff at Haggin Oaks. But the Arcade Creek Watershed Group does it for him, about twice a year. The creek runs through Samuelson’s course in central Sacramento.

“We’ve had no complaints,” says Samuelson. Haggin Oaks opened in the 1930s, when regulations on courses were practically nonexistent.

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