Access to Water

[Ian Andrew]

In the Calgary there is enough demand to see a new course or two built around the city. There is easily enough capitol in this oil rich city to see any project through. But there are no new projects because you can’t get the water rights.

Our access to water in Southern Ontario is generally managed/limited/controlled by a water taking permit. Permits are now all short term giving the authorities a great deal of control and clout when it comes to usage. Golf has gone through multiple "voluntary" (I'm being supportive) reductions in usage around some of the more significant rivers and streams. We've also seen a serious move to capturing, collecting and using primarily storm run-off to supply water.

I'm curious to find out about other regions and what the impacts there has been. Is there any serious moves to limit future golf or change the way golf courses are managed? The issue has always held my interest and unfortunately I was unable to attend the last symposium on this topic. I like to be ahead of the curve on these type of issues and I'm curious to see what is going on.

[Scott Weersing]

Are you saying that you cannot dig a well on your own property without a permit? I guess that is possible with an aquifer.

Ok, what about building your own canal to bring in water for your private course? Nope, too much trouble.

What the does the area do for businesses that need water?

I don't think a lake that collects rainwater is viable either.

What about buying water rights from someone else and then using them for a golf course?

[Tom_Doak]

Ian:

I'm suddenly much more interested in this topic as well; I've been looking at a potentially great project that may not happen due to lack of an adequate water supply.  The local government wants the project to happen -- in fact it is their idea -- but the only way it can happen is if they can guarantee the availability of irrigation water from a large nearby lake, which also supplies local farmers.  This is in a country where water rights are not so settled as in the western U.S. and Canada, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Additionally, our project in St. Emilion, France is in an agricultural region where wells are prohibited -- I don't know the full story why -- so the course we are building depends for its irrigation supply upon runoff that goes through the site and is captured in a large lake at the bottom end of the course.  For certain, the lake will not be too pretty in the fall after a dry summer, but it beats not having a golf course at all.

The golf courses in Melbourne and Adelaide have gone to extensive lengths to capture and treat run-off water from nearby roads and use them for irrigation -- all of Australia is droughty, so they are far ahead of us in terms of water capture and water treatment.

[Bill_McBride]

There is a course in Pensacola, Florida, Tiger Point, that gets its irrigation water through a deal with the local jurisdiction which involves a water treatment plant and the mandated minimum use of effluent to irrigate the course. 

This sounds like a good deal until there is too much effluent water and the course, as a result, tends to be both soggy and a little odiferous. 

Is this a look at the future?

One good outcome of limited water could be ubiquitous fast and firm.

[Peter Pallotta]

Ian - there's so much I don't understand. Nestle's, for example, has a bottled water plant just outside of Guelph and, although the whole town is on well-water (i.e. from the underground spring/aquifer) and has restrictions on water use during dry summers, the company recently got a 5 or 7 year extension (from Ontario's Ministry of the Environment) of its permit to draw over three million litres a day -- that's right, over THREE MILLION litres a day -- out of the ground to put in plastic bottles and sell around the world...despite opposition from just about everyone and despite the fact that what they 'pay' (and make a big fuss about how they are doing their corporate/civic duty) is what any local company using water would pay, something like a penny a litre. So, let me get this straight: a local golf course isn't allowed to pay for enough water to keep it a viable field of play for the community, and with its profits staying in the community, but a big multinational can pay for as much water as it can pump out of the ground every 24 hours of continual pumping just to be able to make billions by exporting water out of the country? As I say, I don't understand any of it, it's too complicated and annoying to get my head around....but maybe there's a different approach.  

[Dave McCollum]

To paraphrase Mark Twain:  out West whiskey is for drinking and water for fighting.  And water lawyers are more prevalent than bartenders.

We're lucky because we are down in a the Snake River Canyon where springs emerge from the massive Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, just east of an area called Thousand Springs, the largest trout growing region in the world.  The golf course is located on the first piece of homesteaded land in the region.  We also sit atop a geothermal aquifer.  We generate electricity and grow fish commercially with the water before we pump it back on the golf course, which acts as a giant filter to settle out the fish waste before the water is returned to the river, a process called land application.  We generate more electricity than we consume.  We heat our buildings with the geothermal water.  

Over the years we have done plenty of fighting to secure and protect our water rights and plenty of investing to put the water to beneficial use.  We also have plenty of interactions with the regulatory agencies such as Water Resources and the EPA.  Without the water, there would be nothing here.  For a more informed perspective about water usage in the arid areas of Western North America, I recommend the book "Cadillac Desert."

BTW, when I say we grow fish, I mean a lot of fish.  Last week I sent 8,000 lbs. of live fish to the Asian markets in Calgary.  We do that every week to Asian markets in the NW US and Canada.  We are now doing Tilapia, but in the past, before I lost a couple of water fights, we did millions of pounds of trout.  Golf is more fun, but fish pay the bills.  

Agriculture (in our case, aquaculture) and golf are massive consumers of water.  We use it and return it to the earth.  We understand our obligations to do this responsibly.  My own connection to the game and business of golf has always been coupled with producing good healthy protein for people to eat.  This is an agricultural area.  It's what we do:  grow food.  I think we look at golf a little differently than in other areas.  It's still entertainment and recreation, but almost everyone around here understands working with the land and growing things and just how highly dependent we all are on our water resources.              

[Bill_McBride]

To paraphrase Mark Twain:  out West whiskey is for drinking and water for fighting.  And water lawyers are more prevalent than bartenders.

We're lucky because we are down in a the Snake River Canyon where springs emerge from the massive Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, just east of an area called Thousand Springs, the largest trout growing region in the world.  The golf course is located on the first piece of homesteaded land in the region.  We also sit atop a geothermal aquifer.  We generate electricity and grow fish commercially with the water before we pump it back on the golf course, which acts as a giant filter to settle out the fish waste before the water is returned to the river, a process called land application.  We generate more electricity than we consume.  We heat our buildings with the geothermal water.  

Over the years we have done plenty of fighting to secure and protect our water rights and plenty of investing to put the water to beneficial use.  We also have plenty of interactions with the regulatory agencies such as Water Resources and the EPA.  Without the water, there would be nothing here.  For a more informed perspective about water usage in the arid areas of Western North America, I recommend the book "Cadillac Desert."

BTW, when I say we grow fish, I mean a lot of fish.  Last week I sent 8,000 lbs. of live fish to the Asian markets in Calgary.  We do that every week to Asian markets in the NW US and Canada.  We are now doing Tilapia, but in the past, before I lost a couple of water fights, we did millions of pounds of trout.  Golf is more fun, but fish pay the bills.  

Agriculture (in our case, aquaculture) and golf are massive consumers of water.  We use it and return it to the earth.  We understand our obligations to do this responsibly.  My own connection to the game and business of golf has always been coupled with producing good healthy protein for people to eat.  This is an agricultural area.  It's what we do:  grow food.  I think we look at golf a little differently than in other areas.  It's still entertainment and recreation, but almost everyone around here understands working with the land and growing things and just how highly dependent we all are on our water resources.              

That's fascinating.  I bought a pound of tilapia this afternoon to make fish tacos tonight.  The tilapia was farm raised in Chile. 

[Ronald Montesano]

To paraphrase Mark Twain:  out West whiskey is for drinking and water for fighting.  And water lawyers are more prevalent than bartenders.

We're lucky because we are down in a the Snake River Canyon where springs emerge from the massive Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, just east of an area called Thousand Springs, the largest trout growing region in the world.  The golf course is located on the first piece of homesteaded land in the region.  We also sit atop a geothermal aquifer.  We generate electricity and grow fish commercially with the water before we pump it back on the golf course, which acts as a giant filter to settle out the fish waste before the water is returned to the river, a process called land application.  We generate more electricity than we consume.  We heat our buildings with the geothermal water.  

Over the years we have done plenty of fighting to secure and protect our water rights and plenty of investing to put the water to beneficial use.  We also have plenty of interactions with the regulatory agencies such as Water Resources and the EPA.  Without the water, there would be nothing here.  For a more informed perspective about water usage in the arid areas of Western North America, I recommend the book "Cadillac Desert."

BTW, when I say we grow fish, I mean a lot of fish.  Last week I sent 8,000 lbs. of live fish to the Asian markets in Calgary.  We do that every week to Asian markets in the NW US and Canada.  We are now doing Tilapia, but in the past, before I lost a couple of water fights, we did millions of pounds of trout.  Golf is more fun, but fish pay the bills.  

Agriculture (in our case, aquaculture) and golf are massive consumers of water.  We use it and return it to the earth.  We understand our obligations to do this responsibly.  My own connection to the game and business of golf has always been coupled with producing good healthy protein for people to eat.  This is an agricultural area.  It's what we do:  grow food.  I think we look at golf a little differently than in other areas.  It's still entertainment and recreation, but almost everyone around here understands working with the land and growing things and just how highly dependent we all are on our water resources.              

This is what I think of someone's carelessly-tossed "post of the year" when describing a humorous vapor.

[RJ_Daley]

I once looked at a property near Black Wolf Run, 144 acres along a moraine where they had several trout raising ponds and a processing house, with a lodge like restaurant featuring the raised trout along with steaks mostly.  The ponds had 3 million gallons a day of free flowing well water, that filtered in the various staging of sized fish in the 22 ponds.  The ponds took up about 35-40 acres, and there was another 60 of planted pine, just right for log homes, and there was a log home builder a few miles up the road.  We had a decent topo and my old neighbor, GCA Art Johnson, and I walked the property a couple times w/map examining various routing ideas. There is more slope than detected on aerial. Just another opportunity I didn't pull the trigger on.  I have to go down there and see how the property turned out.  The restaurant failed several times.  There were 4 double queen double room w/kitchen and quality Kohler baths, where some very famous actors into racing would stay during Road America races, held just minutes away.  Those were dismantled.  I heard one of the big bottlers bought the place for bottling water.  

The property was the wooded area N of Sumac from Co E and S of Sumac on with only the narrow wooded parcel, and S of hwy 67.  
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=43.719009,-87.98903&spn=0.014175,0.02944&t=h&z=15

[Dave McCollum]

Gee, Ron, when you blow my words up into giant bold type, it doesn’t seem so carelessly-tossed.   I thought the tread was about water access and management around a golf course.  I’m a fish farmer that happens to run a golf course.  No big deal, but we do some things differently and that might be of some interest to guys in the biz.  Care to elaborate a bit more?

[Brent Belote]

Hey GCA'ers, pretty new to the site but have loved the enthusiasm and amount of passion about course architecture. 

I'm in the Oil/Gas business so have spent a lot of time looking at how much water Fracking uses per well (roughly 5m gallons).  On a whole the fracking business consumed about 150 billion gallons of water per year but the question remains: is that a lot?  Well, not really.  The US Consumes roughly 44,000 billion gallons of water per year with agriculture the lions share at 33,000 billion gallons per year.

On average golf courses only consume .5% of total US consumption so 220 billion gallons per year.  With 17k golf courses, roughly 2.7 million gallons per course, does that sound right?  If so, doesn't seem like that much.

I'm surprised that water rights have become such an important issue surrounding golf courses with how little it actually consumes on the whole.  Has there ever been a cost/benefit study to look at whether it would be feasible to put a form of astroturf down for maybe the first 100 yards of fairway after a tee box (which would most likely be carried anyway) and would this even make a meaningful dent in water consumption?  Or would it be too hard on the eyes or expensive?

Brent

[BCowan]

I am curious, has water been pumped out of the Great Lakes and sold to out west?  This thread is very interesting. The course i grew up on just pumped out of a ten mile creek, now they are digging a back up well for drought purposes.   

[Tom_Doak]

Hey GCA'ers, pretty new to the site but have loved the enthusiasm and amount of passion about course architecture. 

I'm in the Oil/Gas business so have spent a lot of time looking at how much water Fracking uses per well (roughly 5m gallons).  On a whole the fracking business consumed about 150 billion gallons of water per year but the question remains: is that a lot?  Well, not really.  The US Consumes roughly 44,000 billion gallons of water per year with agriculture the lions share at 33,000 billion gallons per year.

On average golf courses only consume .5% of total US consumption so 220 billion gallons per year.  With 17k golf courses, roughly 2.7 million gallons per course, does that sound right?  If so, doesn't seem like that much.

I'm surprised that water rights have become such an important issue surrounding golf courses with how little it actually consumes on the whole.  Has there ever been a cost/benefit study to look at whether it would be feasible to put a form of astroturf down for maybe the first 100 yards of fairway after a tee box (which would most likely be carried anyway) and would this even make a meaningful dent in water consumption?  Or would it be too hard on the eyes or expensive?

Brent

Brent:

I have never seen a total sum for how much water is used by golf courses in America, but it has to be more than 2.7 million gallons per year per course.  I think the average is something more like ten times that.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Brent,

Some dessert golf course would use 2.7M gallons in two nights on a hot summer day.  I think courses in the Philly area are limited to 15M gallons per year.  Similar restrictions are in place in other locales.  No real restrictions here in TX (although we get some if we get to stage 4 drought under water regs) and the typical course here in DFW uses perhaps 30-40M gallons per year.  It varies a lot.

Still, I know your overall stats are about right, and golf uses only a very small percentage of the nations water resources.  I thought it was a bit higher, and BTW, with closures, there are now less than 15,000 golf courses.

Old stats say ag used over 80% and now its down to 75% by your stats, reflecting more and more domestic use. But golf is an easier target than homes and farms for reductions.

BTW, all rainfall in TX "belongs to the state" and theoretically cannot be trapped.  Ditto ground water as of recently.  Water is just getting more regulated and harder to get, nearly everywhere.

[Brent Belote]

http://www.usga.org/uploadedFiles/USGAHome/Course_Care/Golf_and_the_Environment/Water/214418%20Lyman,%20Greg%20-%20How%20Much%20Water%20Does%20Golf%20Use.pdf

Found that link on the net.  Says roughly 2b gallons per day for golf courses in the US so I was a little light but still not anywhere near the 27m gallons per year mark.  But then again, I'm not sure whether that number includes rainfall which would clearly contribute to a lot of water needs for courses in the US.  

*** Thanks Jeff that is great info...

[Jim Nugent]

Brent, I was just about to post the same link.  The numbers are from 2003-2005.  The study says there were 16,797 golf courses (facilities) in the U.S. then.  So today's numbers may be lower. 

[Don_Mahaffey]

Jeff,
While I am aware of the State of TX owning all surface rights, I am not aware that the state owns all ground water rights. Landowners are fighting very hard to treat groundwater like a mineral right and I did not know TX had changed that? I'm surprised there are not riots in the streets right now.

Some people are pyros in that they love fire. I'm a hydro. The movement of water from source to rootzone is fascinating to me and I can tell you that in areas of the world where water is truly scarce, they are miles ahead of golf when it come to efficient use of water and water conservation. In the US, water is a commodity in most places and like any commodity there are lots of folks trying to make money off the business of water. As this business drives up the price, we will start to see some changes. Changes like closed systems where water is never allowed to run off, blow away, or evaporate. Changes in how we pump where we will move away from using sheer power and start using some ingenuity, like making gravity our friend instead of our enemy. And in golf, we will eventually come to the realization that too much water is what ills much of our turf. Think about what the over use of water drives; weeds, disease, compaction, the need for more cultural practices to get some air into the ground, a reliance on shallow rooted turf that requires more care. It is a long list, but it also drives much of the commerce of turf care. Simply put, turf managers are trained to over water, and then turn to remedies to address the issues. It is plain as day, but they will not be talking much about that in Orlando this week.

[Lou_Duran]

http://www.usga.org/uploadedFiles/USGAHome/Course_Care/Golf_and_the_Environment/Water/214418%20Lyman,%20Greg%20-%20How%20Much%20Water%20Does%20Golf%20Use.pdf

Found that link on the net.  Says roughly 2b gallons per day for golf courses in the US so I was a little light but still not anywhere near the 27m gallons per year mark.  But then again, I'm not sure whether that number includes rainfall which would clearly contribute to a lot of water needs for courses in the US.  

*** Thanks Jeff that is great info...

If my math is correct, that's about 45 Million gal. avg. per course annually in addition to what Mother Nature provides without going through the irrigation system.  Mind that the survey relied on courses reporting their usage and I would be extremely suspect of their accuracy.  For example, a course I am very familiar with is allowed to pull a generous amount of water from a creek which runs through the property.  It reports each year to the CoE how much it used, always an amount lower than the quota.  It never had an operating meter on the intake in the many years I knew members of the staff, so the estimate was at best a guess.

More and more people consider water to be a "public good" in the populist definition of the day (I defer to my friend Michael Whitaker to articulate this concept).  While this attitude and, more importantly, the political application poses problems in terms of consumption and care of the infrastructure (I would like an accurate, non-political estimate of the amount of water lost or wasted before it gets to the consumer), it does feed the conspiratorial/social justice imaginations of people who don't or won't understand markets (e.g. seeking a connection in the very different situations vis-à-vis water in Calgary and Ontario).

Dick Daley-  the difference between you, me, and folks like T Boone Pickens is that we were looking for ways to scratch out a dollar in something we love from very infertile soils, while the latter were buying water rights before the scarcity made news in the mainstream media.  Pickens has his Karsten course (though I don't think he plays golf) and many other toys.  Always remember the first lesson of economics is scarcity- there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it.  While I argue that the problem in golf is as much in the demand side as it is in supply, there are relatively few markets where golf at prevailing prices is scarce.  Of course, a sure way to drive up demand is to subsidize it (e.g. municipal golf in SoCal).  We have done much of the same with water in places.

Bill McBride- a thoughtful "middle of the road" guy like you might consider one of the newer rites of the green movement- local sourcing.  Surely there must be some tilapia raised in the FL Panhandle.  Better yet, probably within a couple miles from where you play golf, you can drop a line and take home some wonderful mahi mahi, snapper or mingo.  Far superior to bland tilapia.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/fish-tacos-recipe.html   

[Bill_McBride]

http://www.usga.org/uploadedFiles/USGAHome/Course_Care/Golf_and_the_Environment/Water/214418%20Lyman,%20Greg%20-%20How%20Much%20Water%20Does%20Golf%20Use.pdf

Found that link on the net.  Says roughly 2b gallons per day for golf courses in the US so I was a little light but still not anywhere near the 27m gallons per year mark.  But then again, I'm not sure whether that number includes rainfall which would clearly contribute to a lot of water needs for courses in the US.  

*** Thanks Jeff that is great info...

If my math is correct, that's about 45 Million gal. avg. per course annually in addition to what Mother Nature provides without going through the irrigation system.  Mind that the survey relied on courses reporting their usage and I would be extremely suspect of their accuracy.  For example, a course I am very familiar with is allowed to pull a generous amount of water from a creek which runs through the property.  It reports each year to the CoE how much it used, always an amount lower than the quota.  It never had an operating meter on the intake in the many years I knew members of the staff, so the estimate was at best a guess.

More and more people consider water to be a "public good" in the populist definition of the day (I defer to my friend Michael Whitaker to articulate this concept).  While this attitude and, more importantly, the political application poses problems in terms of consumption and care of the infrastructure (I would like an accurate, non-political estimate of the amount of water lost or wasted before it gets to the consumer), it does feed the conspiratorial/social justice imaginations of people who don't or won't understand markets (e.g. seeking a connection in the very different situations vis-à-vis water in Calgary and Ontario).

Dick Daley-  the difference between you, me, and folks like T Boone Pickens is that we were looking for ways to scratch out a dollar in something we love from very infertile soils, while the latter were buying water rights before the scarcity made news in the mainstream media.  Pickens has his Karsten course (though I don't think he plays golf) and many other toys.  Always remember the first lesson of economics is scarcity- there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it.  While I argue that the problem in golf is as much in the demand side as it is in supply, there are relatively few markets where golf at prevailing prices is scarce.  Of course, a sure way to drive up demand is to subsidize it (e.g. municipal golf in SoCal).  We have done much of the same with water in places.

Bill McBride- a thoughtful "middle of the road" guy like you might consider one of the newer rites of the green movement- local sourcing.  Surely there must be some tilapia raised in the FL Panhandle.  Better yet, probably within a couple miles from where you play golf, you can drop a line and take home some wonderful mahi mahi, snapper or mingo.  Far superior to bland tilapia.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/fish-tacos-recipe.html   

I was operating under orders from headquarters. 

Also, I like catching, not too big on fishing. 

[Lou_Duran]

Some people are pyros in that they love fire. I'm a hydro.

Both can be quite fascinating if not a bit scary.  Years ago, after a round of golf on a hot day and several beers on the pool deck at the host's house, I got into a long conversation with a guy who had been in the water business all his life.  His thesis was that water is a living entity with a mind of its own, and particularly driven to expand its bounds.  While I still had some of my faculties, I tried to suggest that perhaps physics/gravity might have something to do with it, but he would have none of it.  It got downright scary when he had me down on my belly on the pool deck, showing me how the water was eating away at the gunite and concrete, causing cracks to escape its confinement.  No nightmares, but I am always amazed in how much meaning we can find in the most unusual things.

Bill-

I should have known that not even the environment gets a higher priority than maintaining the always fragile domestic tranquility.  I've been married for nearly 40 years and each day find some nuance that previously escaped me.  One good thing about tilapia- sort of like chicken- is that it seldom offends. Your analysis is right on, substituting a "stronger" fish for what was ordered tips the risk/reward equation in the wrong direction.  Always listen to your elders!     

[Thomas Dai]

On average golf courses only consume .5% of total US consumption...

A state-by-state breakdown analysis might be interesting. Also, out of interest, and no slight intended, but does anyone have any figures for golf course water consumption in other parts of the world?
atb

[Jim_Kennedy]

Here's an interesting idea:

 http://www.orenco.com/doclib/documents/NCS-24.pdf

Seems like it could be readily adapted to bringing water to courses in areas where infrastructure doesn't exist.

[Cliff Hamm]

The local town muni uses effluent.  The waste water treatment plant is less than .5 miles away and it is piped over.  Makes perfect sense.

[Ian Andrew]

Thanks for the comments, I thought I would respond to a few comments and a add a few more.

Treated Effluent

Since it has been raised a few times, the issue we face with the use of treated effluent "in some instances" is the quality of the treated water is poor. The biggest issue I've seen is the slow and steady build up of salts in the soil from the use of treated water. I've been involved in a project that uses treated water - required for the golf and housing project. The pattern is predictable - drought brings - the increased use of treated water - which brings decline in the turf - until the fall rains flush out the soil - and they can cycle the treated water into the infiltrations system on the course and not onto the turf. I've always assumed cool season grass regions will alays struggle with trying to use treated water.

Self Sufficiency

We built a project called Copper Creek that I believe would be self sufficient. It collects 90% of all rainwater on the course lands including rough and fescue. The pond system - required through approvals - has a usable capacity of 20 million gallons. While they can also draw on the high water events from the river (a diversion system based upon high flow of the river) the course has proven to be self sufficient.

Water Quality

We have lots around Toronto. Because we see a lot of snow and treat our roads with road salt, the quality of our run-off and early season water is abysmal. The water improves through the season, but always carries trace salts and other pollutants. The use of city water is essentially ending through cost and political will. The trick has been to find a way to keep better quality water and this is becoming tough in city of 6 million people.

[Lou_Duran]

I wonder if "self sufficiency" is possible for a good majority of U.S. markets, even with new construction.  And if not, assuming that water supplies are increasingly constrained, does the trend of renovating and building "strategic" courses persists?  It seems to me that target golf with lower turf maintenance requirements might prevail out of necessity.  Regardless, more "natural"/less manicured conditions should be the rule at most places, which is good for those who truly enjoy F & F.