[enviro-vlc] How Green Is Golf?

[Vern Weitzel]

http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2008/05/environment_intro

GOLF & THE ENVIRONMENT

How Green Is Golf?


By John Barton
Portraits By Kagan McLeod
Illustration By Christoph Niemann
May 2008
In January 1995, 81 people got together in a conference room at Pebble Beach for 
three days to discuss what could be done to make golf more eco-friendly. Present 
were representatives from all the major golfing bodies, and all the leading 
national and local environmental groups, too. There had never been such a 
meeting before. "It was really difficult getting some people to come," recalls 
Paul Parker, executive vice president of the Center for Resource Management, 
which orchestrated the meeting. "Particularly from the golf-community side, 
there was a lot of suspicion about who these environmental people were, and why 
they kept criticizing golf. They felt that the environmentalists didn't 
understand the game and had not made much of an effort to understand it. They 
saw these guys as the enemy."
"We really expected an explosive atmosphere," says Ted Horton, who at the time 
was vice president of resource management for Pebble Beach, with responsibility 
for the whole property, including all the golf courses and 17 Mile Drive. "I had 
the job of welcoming the group on that first morning. My heart was in my throat. 
I thought, We could have some real fireworks here."
But the attendees talked. And talked. And today, 13 years later, after five 
national conferences and dozens of smaller meetings and workshops, they're still 
talking. Improvements have been made, reports, guidebooks and educational videos 
have been published, and the effort -- which has become known as the Golf & the 
Environment Initiative -- has allowed the game to claim that it's cleaning up 
its act.
Wait, you say, hasn't golf always been green? Golf courses have trees and grass, 
critters; all kinds of nature and stuff, right? What's not to like? Better than 
a strip mall or a parking lot, surely. Yes, yes, of course. But the fact is that 
before the 1995 meeting, there were serious issues surrounding golf and its 
impact on the environment. And -- despite much self-congratulatory hyperbole 
from the golf industry about environmental sensitivity, sustainability and 
stewardship, and the obligatory eco-claims of every new golf resort -- there are 
still plenty of serious problems today. There are issues about where golf 
courses are built, about how they're built, and especially about how they're 
maintained. Golf could do more. As Parker says: "There's a terrific opportunity 
for golf and golf courses to demonstrate real environmental leadership. The 
attitude generally is, yeah, we need to do some things to avoid getting 
criticized. That's where the vision ends."
To find out more about these issues, and how serious they are, and what's being 
done about them, I interviewed a variety of the leading thinkers who reside at 
the intersection of golf and the environment: a golf-course architect, an 
anti-pesticide activist, an organic golf-course superintendent, a government 
regulator, a golf-course inspector, a turfgrass expert, an environmentalist. We 
talked about golf, where it has been and where it's headed. The conversations 
were long and at times contradictory, complicated and confusing. We spoke of 
water tables, endocrine function, genetically engineered grass. Salamanders. The 
American chestnut. President Bush. From the many hours of transcribed tapes, 
plus plenty of other conversations, visits to obscure corners of various 
libraries, and late-night sessions with Google, here are some of my conclusions 
about golf and the environment:
GOLF IN AMERICA WILL FACE A CRISIS OVER WATER.
There simply won't be enough to go around for golf courses to continue to do 
what they've been doing (one report says U.S. courses each use on average 
300,000 gallons a day). Water is going to have to be increasingly carefully 
managed by everyone -- some have even described it as "the new oil." By 2025, 
according to the United Nations Environmental Programme's 2007 report, about 1.8 
billion people in the world will be living in conditions of absolute water 
scarcity, and two-thirds of the planet will be subject to water stress. In 
America, demand for water grows while global warming has meant shrinking 
glaciers and mountain snow levels (and thus less snowmelt to fill our streams 
and rivers and reservoirs), more evaporation of freshwater reserves and lower 
rainfall in some areas and even unexpected droughts (not to mention rising sea 
levels threatening some coastal courses -- see page 207). There will be 
increasing financial and regulatory pressures on golf courses' use of water, 
especially in high-population desert areas where shortages are acute, such as 
Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing cities in America (the population has 
tripled to 1.7 million in the last 20 years, and by one estimate that figure 
might double by 2015). Recently the U.S. Geological Survey announced that 
demands on the aquifer beneath the Coachella Valley in California -- including 
from 126 area golf courses -- are so great that in the past nine years, large 
parts of the valley have sunk more than a foot.
In the short term, golf has already proved to be innovative in adapting to the 
challenge of conserving water. Some golf courses are using treated effluent 
water or wastewater instead of drinkable water, irrigating smaller areas of the 
property, irrigating more efficiently and with better equipment, raising mowing 
heights, and using new strains of grass that require dramatically less water. 
All of these things will continue. New courses in the desert will become rarer. 
The practice of overseeding fairways in the South with cool-season grasses in 
the winter will become harder to justify, and less common. A lot of golf courses 
might disappear.
THE PESTICIDES THAT GOLF COURSES USE, AND THE ONES THAT PEOPLE THROW ON THEIR 
LAWNS, PERHAPS ARE NOT AS SAFE AS WE BLITHELY ASSUME THEM TO BE.
To coin a phrase, there are known knowns when it comes to pesticides, but there 
are also an awful lot of unknown unknowns. Even if the superintendents at every 
one of America's 16,000 courses are rigorous in applying pesticides sparingly 
and with extreme caution -- and given the pressure they're often under to 
deliver unblemished, Augusta-like grass year-round, that's unlikely -- can we be 
sure these chemicals aren't harmful? There are many unanswered questions. Why 
are various diseases like autism, asthma and all kinds of cancers on the rise? 
Why are Western men and women increasingly infertile? Why did my friend's 
girlfriend's dog get tongue cancer and die? It's not unreasonable to think that 
exposure to synthetic chemicals -- some of whose residues are found in high 
concentrations as far away as the Arctic -- are to blame. There's a reason that, 
for instance, Connecticut recently banned pesticides from all school grounds 
(grades K through 8), and why more than 30 states have some kind of pesticide 
restriction on school property. There's a reason golf-course superintendents 
dress like Power Rangers when they spray the golf course. There's a reason the 
organic movement is growing.
ENVIRONMENTALISM ISN'T GOING AWAY.
As global warming increases, and common sense prevails, and the leaders of 
commerce and industry realize there's a buck to be made by being green-minded 
(or, more often, pretending to be), environmentalism is going to have large, 
growing and profound effects on all of our lives. What does this mean for golf? 
Like the fur coat and the SUV, the "Augusta look" -- freakishly green 
wall-to-wall grass on a life-support system of too much water and toxic 
chemicals, greens running at virtually unplayable speeds, ornamental flowers all 
over the place -- will become less admired, and even stigmatized. It works for 
the Masters, but that's just one week a year at an extremely wealthy private 
club that gets very little play (there are only 300 members, and the course is 
closed all summer). It doesn't work -- and isn't desirable -- at most other 
places. The aspiration -- obsession -- to be like Augusta has probably always 
had less to do with the needs and wants of golfers, who know that the game is 
all about taking the rough with the smooth, and more to do with the egos of 
golf-course owners, tournament directors and people who sit on greens committees.
As water becomes scarcer, as organic-management practices increase, as 
environmentalism and environmental legislation start to bite more than they 
have, as the economy struggles, and as we come to appreciate the aesthetics of 
golf courses in all their many natural, beautiful hues, the way the game looks 
will change. And the way it plays will change too, with firmer and faster turf 
demanding a return to shotmaking, creativity, the bump-and-run. It's starting to 
happen already: The hot courses are not dutiful apostles of Augusta; they are 
unique, wild and woolly-looking layouts like Bandon Dunes, Sand Hills, Chambers 
Bay. Americans increasingly love to visit the rugged, natural links of the 
British Isles, where the game began. That's where we're headed: back to the future.
But don't take my word for any of this stuff. Read what these guys have to say 
-- unfortunately they are all guys -- and make up your own mind.Then log into 
our Golf Digest Forums and join the conversation.