LEED rating system for golf courses?

[Blake Conant]

I'm considering potential research topics for my thesis and was wondering what all your thoughts would be on a voluntary LEED golf course design rating system? 

For those that aren't familiar with LEED, it provides building owners and operators with a framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.  Basically, it gives you points based on how green and efficient your building.  It spans a timeline from preliminary design meetings all the way until occupation.  The more points you acquire, the better ranking you get.  It goes from LEED Certified to Silver, Gold, and Platinum. 

Would designers be receptive or unreceptive to this?  What do you see as potential flaws?  Who would contribute to writing the guidelines?  Should there be a baseline code for constructing golf courses, similar to ASHRAE?  Is there something like this already in place or in the works?

I'd appreciate anybody's thoughts on the topic.  Thanks.

[Jim_Kennedy]

http://www.costar.com/josre/pdfs/JOSREMay2010SustainableGolfCourses.pdf
http://www.eifg.org/
http://planetsave.com/2009/07/27/justin-timberlake-opens-first-leed-certified-golf-course/

There are quite a few people headed in the same direction. This is a small samlping. 

[Brian Ross]

Blake,

Golf Environment Organization (GEO) is a Scotland-based non-profit that does basically exactly what you are proposing.  They use a points system similar to LEED (Architecture) and the Sustainable Sites Initiative (Landscape Architecture) to award courses with a GEO Certified label as sustainable golf developments.

To this point, around 30-40 courses worldwide have received the GEO Certified label, though only 4 in the US thus far.

I would recommend checking that out before you go any further.  You can find out more about them at www.golfenvironment.org

[Blake Conant]

http://www.costar.com/josre/pdfs/JOSREMay2010SustainableGolfCourses.pdf
http://www.eifg.org/
http://planetsave.com/2009/07/27/justin-timberlake-opens-first-leed-certified-golf-course/

There are quite a few people headed in the same direction. This is a small samlping. 

This is a great starting point.  Thanks fellas. 

[Mike Nuzzo]

I don't see how spending $16MM on a renovation is environmentally sound - seems a waste of diesel or water depending on your metric
There must be LEED loopholes

I read of a building that put a park on its roof to improve its carbon footprint
As a result it benefited its LEED ranking / points
I'm not sure how lifting 500 tons of top soil 100 feet in the air is environmentally beneficial
Add the irrigation & maintenance expenses too
They could have planted way more trees in a depleted rain forest for much more environmental bang for their buck

Maybe compare and contrast LEED, Audubon & GEO.
Good luck

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

LOL.  At some point, if you figure all the enviro costs basically any type of development may come out the same, depending on what you value.  The only real carbon footprint reductions would probably come from shooting most of the people and leaving it to the animals, no?

I tend to agree with you, but apparently they feel the one time expenditure is offset by a lifetime of greeness.  BTW, I am sure the irrigation would come from rainwater harvest tanks, no?

[Mike Nuzzo]

Thanks Jeff

Mirimichi could have had the same lifetime of greeness and spent 50% less then use the saved $ for malaria nets or those little water filters

[Steve_Lovett]

A Seattle non-profit group called Sustainability Partners has a designation for various project types (corporate, healthcare, educational campuses, etc.) that is called "Salmon Safe".  They've recently created that designation for golf courses, and I understand will be awarding their first ever golf course with that designation (Salish Cliffs - southwest of Seattle).  There may be some elements of that program that are portable to other geographies as a place to start.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

Not familiar with the project you mention, but have no doubt its true.  In malaria areas, I doubt they are worried about the finer points of the enviorment.

Steve,

Hadn't heard of that one.  Seems like a lot of folks are getting into this.  If Audubon has been critiqued as doing it for the fees, I wonder why the other groups won't get the same treatment.

As to portability, that is one of the major issues with these one size fits all initiatives.  One project of mine looked into LEEDS, which is more Land Arch based.  It gives points for bike racks.  Does providing a bike rack at a golf course really make it more environ sensitive?  It would also take a club storage room, or rental clubs, or something to make riding to the course a real alternative.  So, there are possible expenditures that really just cost the project money, but are done to get points, and may not really affect the environment.

Does that make these initiatives wrong?  No, but portability and broad perspectives and some regional flexibility are necessary to make them more effective.

[Blake Conant]

I don't see how spending $16MM on a renovation is environmentally sound - seems a waste of diesel or water depending on your metric
There must be LEED loopholes

I read of a building that put a park on its roof to improve its carbon footprint
As a result it benefited its LEED ranking / points
I'm not sure how lifting 500 tons of top soil 100 feet in the air is environmentally beneficial
Add the irrigation & maintenance expenses too
They could have planted way more trees in a depleted rain forest for much more environmental bang for their buck

Maybe compare and contrast LEED, Audubon & GEO.
Good luck

I think you raise some good points, and the current LEED system being prescriptive based and not performance based might be some of the problem. 

This is a little off-topic, but I live in Athens, GA and we just had our eco film festival.  One of the movies was titled "You've been Trumped" which documented Donald Trump's construction of his (in)famous Scotland course.  Some of you may have heard about it or seen it.  It's worth a look.  Ultimately, it reinforced my idea to continue researching this topic. 

Once again, I appreciate the thoughts.

[Carl Rogers]

I am a LEED AP and an Architect (buildings).

You are going to have to start w/ the Clubhouse.  The parking lot is a big problem - Heat Island.

Some highly credible organization will have to develop a set of criteria requiring many years of testing and thought. Some of the criteria might be:
-Water reduction and re-cycling will be one focus
-Amount of disturbed Soil during construction
-Grass varieties
-natural fertilizers created on site or within 100 miles
-a fairly dense routing plan, making fewer miles of vehicle maintenance trips
-obviously no carts
-small greens
a bunch more I can't think of right now ... Is there local sand available for bunkers?

[Steve_Lovett]

Mike,

Not familiar with the project you mention, but have no doubt its true.  In malaria areas, I doubt they are worried about the finer points of the enviorment.

Steve,

Hadn't heard of that one.  Seems like a lot of folks are getting into this.  If Audubon has been critiqued as doing it for the fees, I wonder why the other groups won't get the same treatment.

As to portability, that is one of the major issues with these one size fits all initiatives.  One project of mine looked into LEEDS, which is more Land Arch based.  It gives points for bike racks.  Does providing a bike rack at a golf course really make it more environ sensitive?  It would also take a club storage room, or rental clubs, or something to make riding to the course a real alternative.  So, there are possible expenditures that really just cost the project money, but are done to get points, and may not really affect the environment.

Does that make these initiatives wrong?  No, but portability and broad perspectives and some regional flexibility are necessary to make them more effective.

Jeff-

Here's the program... 

http://www.salmonsafe.org/getcertified/golf-courses

In many cases, golf courses have pursued Audubon purely for marketing purposes - not because they give a rip about the ecological performance of their facility.  This program requires more, and ongoing monitoring.   

BTW - I'm a partner in an architecture/planning/landscape architecture firm - and am also a LEED-AP.  I don't see LEED, per-se as relevant to golf course development.  There's no reason that a clubhouse, golf course, or site can't be designed to perform at the highest level of efficiency/conservation.  In our case, some of our "greenest" projects haven't pursued LEED certification because it wasn't a priority for our clients.

[Nick Campanelli]

I'm a Landscape Architect in Boston and use LEED regularly.  The system in a joke from a site standpoint.  The only points we pursue regularly deal with irrigation, and most of the time the client doesn't want irrigation to pursue an extra point.  A year after installation, the client always comes back and asks why his plants / turf are dying.....my typical response, "well, you wanted that extra point."  Unfortunately, this is how we see the system used.  I sit in meetings routinely where where we talk about how to maximize points, not about the actual sustainable practices that could be used for the given project.  The best part is that a whole profession labeled "green engineers" has been developed to run coordination meetings, but they may as well be labeled "point maximizers" because that is all they bring to the table many times.    

The heat island example mentioned above has a number of loop holes, the biggest of which is the fact that we can set our own limit of work for the project, and can manipulate the square footage and shade percentages as needed to get your project approved, gaining the project an extra point or two.  I have yet to see this point rejected or questioned.  

There are 11 LA's in my current office, and 2 of them are pursuing continuing education credits to maintain their LEED accreditation.  I know our office isnt alone.  Frankly, most of us feel its pointless to support a sustainable system that does nothing but pull more money out of the project budget.    

If anyone has further questions regarding site related points, I can provide answers.  I deal with them weekly.  

[Carl Rogers]

Like a most 'sustaninable policy' efforts out there, LEED is the beginning.  It is highly arguementative and at a point superficial.

But if there is no beggining, there are can be no real progress later.  Wait 40 years ......

[Jeff_Brauer]

Carl,

So true, but as Nick mentions, always hard to implement with a clients budget in the here and now!