Renovation road blocks, as if GCA wasn't challenging enough...

[David Davis]

In the past I've shared some of the trials and tribulations we have had in trying to make improvements at my home club The Noordwijkse Golf Club. We had an amazing plan on the table to move the 1st hole to the left and into the dunes creating without a doubt a truly world class start and allowing us the opportunity to improve and extend the driving range.

We applied for the permits a couple years ago. These permits were granted but then one of the local nature organization with strong funding and nothing better to do in life got their paws into the mix. They protested strongly and appealed the permit ruling. Then delayed, then appealed again on different grounds to protect an invisible snail, who's natural habitat would of been slightly endangered. (to me the equivalent of protecting air molecules from being moved out of place) They also made claims to protect the "grijs dune" fixed dunes with herbaceous vegetation even though we were working with top experts to create more than we were moving and of all things to protect the dune thorns (which are our equivalent to gorse). A nasty bush that grows rampant here.

On the 24th of December we lost the case in every aspect of the proceedings with no chance of appeal and no future hope for any of these types of changes.

Of course their are other areas to invest in but chalk "another" one up for the slug lovers!

It's tough in Europe to get things done. Maybe someone like Trump will come in some day and buy up the Dutch coastline and pay off all the trouble makers. But I doubt it.

Happy New Year everyone!

[Tom_Doak]

David:

Sorry to hear it.  I was hoping you'd set a precedent for being able to do a bit of work in the dunes there.  Holland would be a golf paradise if the people were only as practical as the Scots! 

[Patrick_Mucci]

David,

It's unfortunate that the outcome wasn't the one you desired.

I think activists are getting worse.

I say that because they've expanded their efforts beyond works in the planning stage and are now trying to shut down courses that are open and in full operation.

[David Davis]

Yes, the worst part of this is really that we are talking about a piece of land on our own property that is totally and completely grown in and under deep bushes and shrubs. The dune preservation organization has a mandate to protect and bring back the natural aspect of the dunes, like more open sandy areas etc. As a club we make huge improvements in this area and this small piece of land would hugely benefit from all this work and dune renovation as well.

Just because they could, they chose to go against this and basically their own mandate because it's for the good of the few (our private club) and not for the good of the general population. Welcome to Calvinism. It's all amazingly frustrating.

On the other side I am impressed in some ways that they managed to create a huge campaign, propaganda attack, master the local media usage and other political aspects of this case all for the most nonsensical, meaningless things (microscopic snails) I could ever imagine, all to keep the evil aristocratic and evil golfers from further expanding their web of terror.

Tom, you may be right, we just need more Scots here and less Dutch. Maybe we can set up a trade!

[Paul Gray]

I am all in favour of protecting the environment and working, where possible, with local environmental groups. Here in England there are a number of success stories in this regard, my own club included.

It annoys the hell out of me then when a club such as yours seemingly does everything right and yet the narrow minded idiots refuse to see beyond your tag as golfers, and therefore apparently the embodiment of evil. How precisely did they suggest you were going to damage microscopic snails in the undergrowth, particularly if their own 'vision' involves a lot a clearance work?

[Duncan Cheslett]

I am sure that this more to do with class conflict than slugs, just as the successful campaign against fox hunting in the UK was largely about toff-bashing and very little to do with the welfare of foxes.

It is a reminder of just how despised golf clubs are by certain sections of society, on this side of the Atlantic at least. Scotland is probably the exception, where golf is still perceived as a game of the people rather than the privileged.

Even at my rather blue-collar club envious looks are cast by the local community at the 120 acres we occupy in the middle of Reddish Vale Country Park. I'm sure that the vast majority of people consider that such a beauty-spot should be available for the benefit of everyone, not just 350 members.

If I was not a golfer, I'd probably agree with them!

[David Davis]

Paul,

That makes two of us. I wish I could share the verdict with everyone, it's extremely long, legal, boring and worst of all in Dutch and extremely difficult to translate not to mention far too time consuming.

This process involved them laying standards on us as a club that have never before been required on anything in the world. One example of this were the requirements with regards to the aforementioned Grijsduin (dune vegetation areas). They required us to provide scientifically proven processes and guaranteed outcomes for moving, replacing and growing these areas. This did not exist, had never been proven and had never been required by any type of land or agricultural project. We tackled this obstacle with help from the University of Wageningen agricultural science departments and some of the top scientists in the world to provide this proof and in the end they wouldn't accept it and simply passed this off onto a decision that entailed deciding if the process we were taking was "mitigation" or "compensation". It was determined to be compensation, i.e. we were making improvements that were necessary because we were moving natural environmental areas regardless of the size of them. the fact that we were creating more of these areas and had developed scientific proof was not viewed as relevant.

Paul, I'm certain there are many similar types of decisions in the world that are at least equally frustrating but I've never experienced or heard about any that went into such amazing detail to protect the environment etc as we did here. And even being clearly biased towards the golfers on this case I can honestly say that the dune preservation organization literally ensured the deterioration of these particular dunes will only get worse in years to come while our club would of made significant improvements to an area of dunes land this organization is not allowed to touch.

To me that means in the end, they just wanted to be "right", they did not want to follow their mandate and improve and bring back the original dunes land.

Truly sad!

[Ruediger Meyer]

But there must be a legal ground on which the verdict came through, or is dutch jurisdiction arbitrary?

[David Davis]

Ruediger,

There wasn't any but perhaps now with this case and decision there is.

There are a lot of gray areas in the law, if there weren't there wouldn't be any reason to have court cases right?

We are just unlucky that where we are falls under the legislation of a specific natural habitat. I don't believe that our neighbors, Kennemer Golf Club and Royal Hague have these issues although I'm certain they have issues of their own.

If you read Dutch I'd be happy to send you the verdict. In fact, the higher court due to the appeals had pushed our case to the European Court under the Natura 2000 legislation. The European Court I believe decided that our case didn't fit and sent it back to the Dutch court to make the decision themselves.

[James Boon]

David,

As Paul says, there are a number of environmental success stories in the UK, including links courses, where the club, course and environment (and its support groups) are able to work together. A shame that's not the same in Holland? Having said that perhaps with time it can change? Some years ago most people in the UK would have said that golf was bad for the environment, but thanks to a number of factors such as wildlife programs like Springwatch showing how good courses are for wildlife, people are starting to change their short sighted opinions.

I do understand your frustration, especially as you had previously approval for the work, but are you sure the snails are meaningless? I'm no expert on the ecology of dutch dunes but there are any number of reasons why the snails could be important to the food chain or biodiversity of the area? From everything you have said, your frustration should be targeted at the protesters, not the things that they are claiming to protect.

Cheers,

James

[Ulrich Mayring]

What this story tells us is that social beats scientific every time. Golf clubs these days need to wake up to the fact that they are part of a changed society, but haven't changed themselves at all.

I'm sure those environmentalists have kids and I'm equally sure if those kids played golf at Noordwijkse, you'd get a different result. The same would probably hold if the club had found a way to pay them off. Such as installing and maintaining ecological zones and research projects that are run by the environmentalists, but paid for by the golf club.

Fences don't work anymore in continental Europe, golf clubs need to be inclusionary these days. Environmentalism has surged to the forefront of societal concerns, you can either fight it or join it. If you're Trump or in the US or Asia, you can still ignore it. For the time being.

Folks, never go to court with environmentalists in continental Europe. You have got to figure out a way to work with them and if it means changing your plans for the course or its maintenance, then ****ing find a way or suffer the consequences.

Ulrich

[Ian Andrew]

While our process can be similar, we have one advantage and that's once we've reached your point we can go to the Ontario Municipal Board where a single judge hears the facts and rules on the case. I've been through the process a few times and seen results go either way. What I can say is the decisions are based upon facts alone and I agree with each decision that I have seen (that includes proposals turned down). They will protect certain environments, but they won't support something that is simply just anti-development. It was put in place to remove some of the political decision making in the planning process. I think it was also done to keep this out of higher courts.

My favourite part of the process is the fact that the judge will also ask his own questions. It's often the most enlightening moment of the discovery process. They tend to be very blunt and direct with both comment and question.

[Paul Gray]

What this story tells us is that social beats scientific every time. Golf clubs these days need to wake up to the fact that they are part of a changed society, but haven't changed themselves at all.

I'm sure those environmentalists have kids and I'm equally sure if those kids played golf at Noordwijkse, you'd get a different result. The same would probably hold if the club had found a way to pay them off. Such as installing and maintaining ecological zones and research projects that are run by the environmentalists, but paid for by the golf club.

Fences don't work anymore in continental Europe, golf clubs need to be inclusionary these days. Environmentalism has surged to the forefront of societal concerns, you can either fight it or join it. If you're Trump or in the US or Asia, you can still ignore it. For the time being.

Folks, never go to court with environmentalists in continental Europe. You have got to figure out a way to work with them and if it means changing your plans for the course or its maintenance, then ****ing find a way or suffer the consequences.

Ulrich

Exactly. And some excellent posts from James and Duncan point to precisely the same conclusion.

I'll try not to bash Trump too much because everyone knows my views on the man but this sort of thing is exactly why I bang on endlessly about his negative impact on the game. And of course, it's not just him. We are, as golfers, part of a bigger society. We can either embrace that society and attempt to work with it or we can continue to be perceived as the enemy and have outcomes such as this.