Water Use Habits Get a Splash of Fresh Ideas

Advances are being made so that sewage-treated or salty water is able to blend with certain types of grasses to maintain lush courses. (By Bill Lackey -- Associated Press)

Another answer might lie in some salt-tolerant grasses that can survive with little to no fresh water, making them ecologically invaluable. In an effort to identify top grasses, the USGA is funding 56 turfgrass research projects at 28 universities this year.

Breeding has been conducted to try to isolate and improve salt tolerance in different turfs. At the moment, salt tolerance is not superb in cool-season grasses to the north, according to Jim Snow, director of the USGA's Green Section, which analyzes golf turfgrass and searches for optimal playing surfaces. But in the south, especially along the coast, a grass known as Seashore Paspalum has provided a glimpse of how salt-tolerent grasses can be successful in alleviating issues with potable water use.

Seashore Paspalum was transported to America during the slave trade, used as bedding for slaves shipped from Africa. Once ashore at ports such as Charleston, S.C., Snow said, the grass was left in the bays and eventually took root along the coast.

Like many grasses, Seashore Paspalum is susceptible to insects and disease, but people interviewed for this article said it plays just like Bermuda or a similar warm-season grass.

"Seashore Paspalum, its niche in its environmental standpoint because of its ability to handle salt," Snow said. "I think there will be more use of it because it looks good and it's very, very salt tolerant."

Support for Salt-Tolerant Grass Grows

Environmental concerns have not caught up with golf's economic engine, so some courses have not had to seek alternative grasses to help sustainability, a transition in the growing process that would temporarily shut down courses.

"It's easy to choose an environmentally adapted species when you're in the planning stages of the project versus a course that was established 80 years ago and doing a reestablishment of the property," Vermeulen said, "because that involves closing down the facility for an extended period of time."

That could eventually change, as ecological issues may force change in the industry.

"When [courses are] told they can't use as much water, they're going to have to make a decision to go to Buffalo grass or Salt grass," Snow said. "It's already happening. There are places where they are cutting back. A lot of states now are limiting the amount of water per golf course."

For courses under development, water issues must be addressed before construction can begin. Eight years ago, when Old Collier Club was in the planning stages, Hiers placed calls to Egypt and Thailand to investigate grass. He twice boarded a plane for 48-hour visits to Hawaii just to see different strains.

As a result, Old Collier Club, which opened Sept. 28, 2001, claims to be the first course in the continental United States covered, tees to greens, in Seashore Paspalum. After time adjusting its irrigation system to Seashore Paspalum's saltwater diet -- about one-fifth of the course's irrigation water is from the ocean, an untreated mixture drawn directly from an underground aquifer -- the course has experienced success with the turf.

In this case, the salt-resistant grass did more than produce a more environmentally friendly playing surface; it yielded a course where one would not have otherwise existed. If Heirs had failed to find the right grass on his worldwide search, the site would have been paved over with a housing development.

"If they hadn't had a grass that could use brackish water," he said, "there'd be 800 units on that property now."