Water Use Habits Get a Splash of Fresh Ideas

Advances in Management Techniques and Understanding of Grasses Address Environmental Concerns

Tim Hiers had a problem: He was in charge of a golf course, but didn't have an easy way to keep it green. There was not enough fresh water to support a golf course near Naples, Fla., where Hiers was about to become course manager at the soon-to-be-built Old Collier Club.

Hiers's predicament is becoming increasingly common to golf course managers and superintendents as the game's effect on the environment gains attention. Golf courses consume 762 billion gallons of water per year, a number that represents about 0.5 percent of the nation's yearly water use, according to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America's latest survey in 2005.

That's an alarming figure, one that has drawn the attention of officials at the highest levels in the game. At issue is how to provide golfers paying either daily greens fees or extravagant membership dues with the lush, green playgrounds they expect without using an inordinate portion of a fresh water supply that is increasingly in demand. The latest solutions lie in two related areas: different kinds of water and different kinds of grasses.

"It's becoming more obvious, as time goes on, that there's going to be increasing competition in the need for potable water sources," Rutgers turfgrass professor James Murphy said. "It's something the golf industry is aware of."

A handful of states near the Colorado River Basin have been in a five-year drought, and much of Georgia and South Carolina is already experiencing drought conditions this summer. In an effort to curb water consumption, the city of Las Vegas started a buyback program where it would purchase, at $1 per square foot, people's lawn to replace it with rocks.

Environmental awareness in golf grew in 1995, when those connected with the sport and certain ecological groups convened at Pebble Beach for what came to be known as the Golf and the Environment Initiative.

Some people are troubled about courses' overuse or irresponsibility with pesticides and fertilizers. Some see the use of potable water as wasteful. Both could stem from American golfers' expectations of pool-table putting surfaces or bright green fairways.

"Golfers see courses on TV that are lush," said Ron Dodson, president of Audubon International, which certifies eco-friendly courses. "That course spent a lot of getting to this green perfection. And then they go to their municipal course and say, 'Why can't our course look like that course?' They really have no clue. That isn't golf in my mind. That's a television studio."

New Challenges Spark Solutions

Non-potable, sewage-treated water -- known also as reclaimed water -- offers one possible answer, though the course superintendents' survey indicated only about 12 percent of courses nationwide use reclaimed water.

Congressional Country Club, this week's host of the AT&T National, uses about 18 million gallons of water per year on each of its two courses. Congressional irrigates with storm run-off water, supplemented with resources from local wells and city-purchased water. It does not use reclaimed water.

About 35 percent of this year's PGA Tour courses irrigate with reclaimed water, said Paul Vermeulen, director of agronomy for the PGA Tour.

Other local courses have tried to refine their watering systems. For Billy Casper Golf Course Management, which oversees area courses such as The Osprey's in Woodbridge; Virginia Oaks in Gainesville; Reston National in Reston; and PB Dye in Ijamsville, that means replacing sprinklers near cart paths and parking lots, where water had been more useful spraying asphalt than grass.