Seniors playing on a pleasantly different looking Ariizona course

[mike_malone]

It's nice to see grass all around.

[David Stamm]

Tucson National is a fun course. It's definitely not a typical desert course. Generally speaking,  I liked it, from what I remember.

[Mike Benham]

Tucson National was in the PGA Tour rotation in the late 60s and the 70s.

Johnny "The Desert Fox" Miller had 3 straight victories in the 70s to earn his nickname. 

[Steve_ Shaffer]

The last Tucson Open was played on the PGAT in 2006 at Tucson National.  Jack Nicklaus represented the resort during his early days. Leo Diegel, once the head pro at Philmont in the Philly 'burbs, then the head pro at El Rio in Tucson, founded the tournament in 1945($5000 purse) by  convincing  PGA TOUR Commissioner Fred Corcoran that Tucson was big enough to support a professional tournament. Phil Mickelson won the event in 1991 as an amateur. Dean Martin and Joe Garigiola were celebrity hosts. The event moved to TN in 1965.

http://www.tucsonconquistadores.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48

[astavrides]

a. there is more grass
ergo
b. it uses more water
ergo
c. Arizona runs out of water faster
ergo
d. one shouldn't play there or support people playing there and then hopefully they will remove some grass or go out of business.

Where did my logic fail, if at all?

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Alex,

Maybe it's  water from the wells that the resort owns.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Alex,

Forget about well water. Your logic fails miserably. Have you ever heard of effluence?

https://www.watereuse.org/files/images/Importance_Tucson.pdf

[Brent Hutto]

Drilling a well into an aquifer means unlimited water as long as you can afford the power to run the pump.

Unlimited, that is,until either you or someone else sucks that mother dry. 

[Don Mahaffey]

Tucson National uses recycled water.   So does Ventana Canyon, La Paloma. Dove Mountain, Vistoso and 90% of all golf courses in Tucson and Phoenix. The only courses in these areas not on effluent are the old course that are grandfathered, but even these are under intense pressure. The law in AZ is if recycled is available you must use it.  The Indian courses are exempt which is why the new course south of Tucson has so much surface water. That would be illegal for a non reservation course.

You can not drill a well in AZ without a permit and you will not get a permit if you are a golf course. For those few courses on ground water, they are severely restricted and their water allotment is reduced every 10 years under the assumption that irrigation technology is improving. AZ does it right in that they base your allotment on ET. It is science based and it doesn't matter if your system is old or what your historical use is.

I know of very few states where a golf course can do as Brent says. In TX, NM, AZ, CA, NV, CO you can not drill a well without a permit and if you get a permit your use is monitored and in most cases you have to pay for the water.  Maybe in the mid west and east you can still drill and pump at will, but not down here or in the west.

[Tom_Doak]

Maybe in the mid west and east you can still drill and pump at will, but not down here or in the west.

Don:

I don't know of any states where you don't need a permit to drill a well.

However, I don't think here in Michigan that there is any limit to what you can pump from the wells you own, or any charge for doing so [other than the electricity].

[astavrides]

Thanks for the information, and for the white paper that Steve sent. I will read it.
Before I do though, let me ask this.
Is effluent water similar to reclaimed? At least in Albuquerque, where I live now, using reclaimed or effluent water saves money, but not water. Effluent water would normally be returned to the Rio Grande after some processing, but if it is instead used on golf courses, that means the water is mostly lost instead of going back to the Rio, where it could have been used again downstream. At least that's how I understand it.

[Matt_Cohn]

Everything except tees, fairways and greens was dormant (or at least not overseeded) — right?

[Don Mahaffey]

Thanks for the information, and for the white paper that Steve sent. I will read it.
Before I do though, let me ask this.
Is effluent water similar to reclaimed? At least in Albuquerque, where I live now, using reclaimed or effluent water saves money, but not water. Effluent water would normally be returned to the Rio Grande after some processing, but if it is instead used on golf courses, that means the water is mostly lost instead of going back to the Rio, where it could have been used again downstream. At least that's how I understand it.

Alex, effluent, reclaimed, recycled...all the same for saying treated waste water.
I don't know if your comment about waste water in NM is correct though.
I've done a few projects in NM with effluent as the source and NM effluent discharge permits are very strict. On our projects we had to assure that no effluent would ever find its way to a creek, stream, or any water way.
And, whatever your take, when a golf course is switched from ground water or potable to reclaimed waste water, it is viewed a saving water as water is no longer removed from the aquifer specifically for turf irrigation.
Plus, using effluent definitely does not save money as treatment required to make the water safe for use on a public area and the infrastructure required to deliver the water is quite expensive. Most of the time switching to effluent is mandated by law and involves a cost increase for the end user, not a decrease. In some cases where the switch is voluntary, there may be a negotiated deal where the end user pays less, but it almost always increases maintenance costs since the poor quality of effluent requires mitigating actions to prevent salt build up.

[Matthew Petersen]

Everything except tees, fairways and greens was dormant (or at least not overseeded) — right?

So it appeared. We're getting into late March and the weather has been quite warm (plus we had rain last week) so the dormant bermuda is starting to green up in places.

[astavrides]

Thanks for the information, and for the white paper that Steve sent. I will read it.
Before I do though, let me ask this.
Is effluent water similar to reclaimed? At least in Albuquerque, where I live now, using reclaimed or effluent water saves money, but not water. Effluent water would normally be returned to the Rio Grande after some processing, but if it is instead used on golf courses, that means the water is mostly lost instead of going back to the Rio, where it could have been used again downstream. At least that's how I understand it.

Alex, effluent, reclaimed, recycled...all the same for saying treated waste water.
I don't know if your comment about waste water in NM is correct though.
I've done a few projects in NM with effluent as the source and NM effluent discharge permits are very strict. On our projects we had to assure that no effluent would ever find its way to a creek, stream, or any water way.
And, whatever your take, when a golf course is switched from ground water or potable to reclaimed waste water, it is viewed a saving water as water is no longer removed from the aquifer specifically for turf irrigation.
Plus, using effluent definitely does not save money as treatment required to make the water safe for use on a public area and the infrastructure required to deliver the water is quite expensive. Most of the time switching to effluent is mandated by law and involves a cost increase for the end user, not a decrease. In some cases where the switch is voluntary, there may be a negotiated deal where the end user pays less, but it almost always increases maintenance costs since the poor quality of effluent requires mitigating actions to prevent salt build up.

Thanks for your detailed responses.
Attached is a link about Albuquerque water reuse that explains in more detail what I was saying. The situation may be different if the water supply is an aquifer rather than a river.  I'm not sure if you can feed effluent back into an aquifer, so using it to water the golf course may indeed by saving water. By the way, as the link discusses, depleting an aquifer also depletes a nearby river thru leaks in the river bottom.

I am not trying to win this argument. I hope I lose the argument so I can keep playing golf in the desert and the Western US relatively guilt-free in terms of water usage.

http://www.abqjournal.com/246622/blogs/nm-science/water-reuse.html

[astavrides]

Alex,

Forget about well water. Your logic fails miserably. Have you ever heard of effluence?

https://www.watereuse.org/files/images/Importance_Tucson.pdf

Tucson National is not on the list of golf courses in Tucson that use reclaimed water. See p.5 of your link, and this Tucson gov't link:
http://www.tucsonaz.gov/water/reclaimed-users
But it seems that they might be in the process of getting it, at least on a partial basis?
http://www.metrowater.com/pdf/IVE_121012.pdf

Looks like a lot of courses in Phoenix and Scottsdale use reclaimed also. Seems like those courses would be good ones to support, all other things being equal.

[Steve Lang]

  In regard to effluents, any discharge to navigable waters or waters of the state require either a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) or state equivalent under the Clean Water Act. Limits are established based upon downstream use designations, water quality criteria, and effluent guidelines... so when there's no dilution available, one has to discharge at essentially the criteria levels which can be very strict... or be subject to stringent waste load allocations if the water course has been designated as "degraded" ... reclaiming it for irrigation is a whole lot easier than assuring it meets your permit limits... especially if folks are willing to pay for it..  to inject it underground requires a Underground Injection Control Permit (UIC), which forces a whole lot of geological and hydrogeological information to be addressed.. lets not go there but to say its also somewhat easier than life with an NPDES permit...

Beneficial re-use is good... salty water is not, beyond a point, like 2000 parts per million for total dissolved solids...  but a place like the Mines in Grand Rapids uses gypsum saturated water... was pretty nice last time I was there!