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The squeeze is on for golf course management as the
Southeast reels from an unrelenting drought.
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A boat ramp on Lake Okeechobee near Okeechobee, Fla., is closed by the low water level on the lake Tuesday, May 1, 2007, as the drought continues statewide. According to Ben Nelson, state meteorologist with the Florida division of emergency management, last year was the driest season in the state since 1895. AP Photo/J. Pat Carter |
Humankind’s struggles with extreme weather phenomena often put the golf course industry in harm’s way as well. A case in point is the ongoing drought in the southeastern United States, a seven-state region that is home to nearly 3,900 golf courses, or 17 percent of the nation’s total golf facilities.
Well into its second year, the drought has severely strained the region’s water supplies, putting at risk both public health standards and well-being in the business sector. The magnitude of the event is notable:
• The trouble in the Southeast started in the fall of 2006 when a major weather anomaly occurred: a six-month run of an El Niño oscillation, which historically brings increased rainfall across the southern tier of the U.S., but this time around did not. The absence of much-needed winter rains set the stage for a devastating year.
• In 2007, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida all recorded their driest January-August period in the last century, with Georgia and Mississippi having their second-driest ever. Further, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi recorded their driest February-April period in 113 years.
• The entire region recorded its warmest August on record.
• By the end of the year, 90.4 percent of the Southeast was abnormally dry or in drought status, and a large portion of the region was under extreme or exceptional drought status.
• The Southeast is currently coming out of El Niño’s alter-ego, La Niña, which features milder and drier-than-normal winters. Aside from some significant rains in the region in late December, she has lived up to her billing.
The prognosis is not good. Long-range forecasts for the Southeast as summer approaches are discouraging, with national meteorologists expecting continued below-average precipitation and warmer-than-normal temperatures. Local and state weather experts fear that drought in 2008 will be the worst ever as water supplies dwindle even further.
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Recreational facilities at the George H. Sparks Reservoir on the south side of Atlanta were left high and dry late in 2007 as the drought in the Southeast reached extreme levels in a region that is highly dependent on surface water. Photo by Barry Gillis |
Trouble on the surface
For the most part, surface water is the lifeblood of the Southeast and, of course, most vulnerable in times such as this.
Forecasters like Doug LeComte, senior meteorologist and drought specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, note that it is highly unlikely even in a best-case scenario that the big lakes so vital to the region’s water supplies would return to normal levels in time to meet impending summer demands.
“In spite of a number of winter storms that have recently affected the nation, much more rainfall is needed to bring wells, lakes and reservoir levels back to normal in many areas of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and parts of Florida,” LeComte said in January. “Over the last year or two, the precipitation deficits in these areas have been measured in feet rather than inches.”
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Boat navigation guides in South Florida’s Lake Okeechobee stand amid dry ground and weeds. The naturally shallow, second-largest freshwater lake in the U.S., was 4 feet below its 9-foot average in January. Photo courtesy of South Florida Water Management District. |
Like others interviewed for this article, LeComte was quick to point out that he was hesitant to talk in January about long-range weather patterns and their consequences for an April publication. Likewise, GCM, limited by advanced deadlines, is aware of how much water can (or can not) run under the proverbial bridge in the interim.
The intention here is to present the facts as they were as recently as possible and also to look ahead (as another dry, hot summer is foreseen for the Southeast) at the consequences for the public in general and the golf course industry in particular, along with the contingency planning of the respective water agencies.
While the Southeast has been the country’s drought epicenter for nearly two years, it has been evident in varying degrees in many other regions of the U.S., even if it comes with the territory for many of them. Indeed, drought costs the nation more than $8 billion annually.
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Top: Robert Young III, CGCS at Carolina Country Club in Raleigh, N.C., hopes his new wells are a hedge against more dire times to come. Photo courtesy of Raleigh CC Center: West Course superintendent Tim Kocks checks the depth of one of six wells that provide most of the irrigation for the CC of Birmingham’s 36 holes. Photo courtesy of CC of Birmingham Bottom: Lee McLemore, CGCS at the Country Club of Birmingham in central Alabama, and Tim Kocks, Class A superintendent at the club’s West Course, check out the plans for a possible irrigation system upgrade at the facility as part of its long-term conservation needs. Photo courtesy of CC of Birmingham |
Drought-watchers
This particular weather event falls into the collective hands of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb., where assembled experts assist in how we deal with such a costly phenomenon by understanding it, providing information about it and advising those most adversely affected by it.
“What we try to do is to get public officials thinking ahead about what they need to do before the next drought occurs,” says the center’s director, Mike Hayes, who has many years of experience in working with governments and organizations to develop drought plans, including Georgia and other states in the Southeast earlier in this decade.
“There are some potential challenges ahead for all of the Southeast. The biggest problem is low water sources, and our concern is that come spring and summer, the high-demand months, it’s going to be very difficult to catch up. Hopefully, people are looking at that now,” says Hayes, who adds that one of the most frustrating aspects of his job is a prevailing wait-and-see attitude on the part of decision-makers at all levels of authority — local, state and regional.
“Officials should be thinking about what could happen, where their priorities are and take steps now,” he says.
A golf lesson for all
Hayes also has a pretty good handle on how all this affects golf courses and the industry’s role in protecting its interests.
“Drought and a lack of water historically causes people to blame others, and there is a poor perception of golf courses and water, mainly because the average layman really doesn’t realize the impact golf has on local economies,” he says. “What golf course management in drought-stricken areas should think about is educating the public on the beneficial roles, or lack of negative roles, their facilities play.”
It’s been an education mitigating drought events, as well, Hayes notes.“One of the lessons we’ve learned is that officials really need to think about the worst-case scenario happening. That seems to be very hard for them to do,” he says. “Secondly, consistent communication and outreach are very important. Tell the public what the situation is and what the potentials are and what you intend to do.”
Hayes adds that the rest of America needs to learn the lessons of
what’s happing in the southeastern U.S., because droughts are no longer just a western issue. “The Great Lakes, for instance, have levels at record lows right now,” he says.
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Lake Virginia in the Talladega National Forest, the chief water supply for Sylacauga, Ala., southeast of Birmingham, is shown here early this year approaching 15 feet below normal. Photo by Darol Russell |
Parched Peach State
Hayes’ words of advice haven’t fallen on deaf ears in Georgia, where the current continuing drought has reached alarming consequences for a great many of its people and businesses, including metropolitan Atlanta (pop. 5 million) and a majority of the state’s 500-plus golf courses.
Georgia’s story is a complex one, a microcosm of the many elements that make the struggle for water in America unique. It’s also a prominent example of the interplay between the golf course industry and those whose hands are on the faucet.
The Environmental Protection Division within the Georgia Department of Natural Resources hammered out a comprehensive drought plan in 2003 in reaction to a drought in the late 1990s and 2000, and it features the first implementation of outdoor water-use controls.
“We worked with 80-some different stakeholders, including golf course management, to give us input for the plan, and from that we developed rules for outdoor water use, residential and business, both in times of drought and non-drought,” says Kevin Chambers, communications director for the Georgia DNR.
About three years later as the current drought began to take root, notably in the northern third of the state where surface water is practically the sole potable source, the EPD’s plan was already at Level 1. Over the next year, as things got worse, the status rose accordingly. Then, last September the EPD declared a Level 4 response, “exceptional or extreme drought,” in 61 counties in northern Georgia and prohibited most types of outdoor water use. The Level 4 response currently remains in effect, while the southern two-thirds of the state is at Level 2.
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Top: The Chattahoochee River runs by part of the Atlanta Athletic Club, shown here in its normal flow through an ancient Indian fish trap.
Bottom: While golf courses in northern Georgia were restricted to watering greens only since September, this photo shows the Chattahoochee River at full bank as the Corps of Engineers released water from Lake Lanier to accommodate the southern part of the state, as well as interests in Alabama and Florida. |
Saving chapter effort
The state golf industry was granted one of the few exceptions to the prohibition, with courses in the affected area not on effluent allowed to water greens only. In retrospect, one wonders what state of peril golf in northern Georgia would be in today if not for proactive efforts by the Georgia Golf Course Superintendents Association.
In 2002, as a prelude to the EPD’s drought plan, the Georgia GCSA joined other industry partners in establishing a water task force and presented the state legislature with basic information about courses, including average water use and economic impact. A few years after that, the GCSAA chapter struck an agreement with the EPD that 75 percent of its member courses would have best management practices for water conservation in place by May 2007.
Two veteran Atlanta-area superintendents with more than 50 years of golf course management experience in the Southeast between them — Ken Mangum, CGCS and director of golf course and grounds at Atlanta Athletic Club, and Mark Esoda, CGCS at Atlanta Country Club — both point out that the formation of the water task force and the BMP initiative were efforts to help position courses to get their fair share of water if and when circumstances reached the point they’re at now.
While greens-only watering — about a 94 percent cutback in overall course irrigation — may seem like a drop in the bucket, it well could have been nothing at all if not for the GGCSA’s response. The BMP initiative’s goal, for example, was met a month early a year ago, with ultimately 91 percent of the chapter’s more than 800 members establishing best management practices and chapter president Richard Staughton, CGCS at Towne Lake Hills in Woodstock, Ga., earning a 2008 GCSAA Excellence in Government Relations Award for his leadership role in the cause.
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Even though he is among the few who can use reclaimed water, Ken Mangum, CGCS and director of golf course and grounds at Atlanta Athletic Club (shown here), bristles at the lack of regional effluent infrastructure. |
Muddy waters
Still, the greens-only mandate irritates many within the superintendent ranks. Mangum, even though he is among a handful in the Atlanta area who can utilize reclaimed water, has been outspoken on behalf of the vast majority of his colleagues who can’t tap into that resource because of the region’s lack of infrastructure for effluent.
“If you look at it from a water-use standpoint, I think they’re still singling out the green industry unfairly,” the 33-year GCSAA member says. “A 94 percent cutback? Name another business entity that has been cut back by that much. They’re still building houses and still building office buildings. They’ve got to get those segments to conserve or stop developing or increase the (water) supply. If it stays this way through this summer, it will be devastating to the golf course industry.”
Many in golf course management also note that northern Georgia’s predicament is muddled by two key government agencies in conflict in trying times — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls most of the water generated in the Chattahoochee River watershed, and the EPD, which is trying to get the public to conserve.
The Corps of Engineers’ role in all this is quite a sticking point. It controls the water flow from lakes in the watershed, including the two largest reservoirs above Atlanta, Lanier and Alatoona. Rain or shine, the Corps for years has been releasing 3.2 billion gallons a day.
“Those lakes have to be managed in such a way to not only accommodate the Atlanta area, but also those communities downstream as far as Florida and Alabama,” says Chambers, who mentions such recipients as a hydroelectric plant in Florida, a nuclear plant in Alabama, federally protected endangered species such as fresh water mussels in the Apalachicola River in the Florida panhandle below Georgia’s Lake Seminole and also oyster and shrimp industries in the Apalachee Bay in the Gulf of Mexico.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who has ordered statewide water conservation in recent months, went to court late last fall to restrict the water flow from the lakes, intensifying long-running disputes between Georgia, Florida and Alabama over water usage from the region’s river basins. Perdue won this particular battle in the war when federal officials approved a curtailment of the water release from the Georgia lakes after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service decided that a lesser flow would not adversely affect the endangered species.
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Top: AAC superintendent Ken Mangum, CGCS, says he’s fortunate to have rare access to reclaimed water in the Atlanta area. Photos courtesy of Atlanta Athletic Club Bottom: Matt Taylor, Class A superintendent at Royal Poinciana, is active among Florida GCSA chapters in lobbying the water district for more realistic restrictions. Photos courtesy of Royal Poinciana GC |
If push comes to shove ...
Meanwhile, Georgia water officials must face up to a bigger issue — the gloomy forecast that says little relief from the drought is forthcoming. Again, in an opinion that was formed three months ago, the Georgia State Climatologist, David Stooksbury, wrote on the EPD Web site that it’s highly unlikely that the northern and western portions of the state would be able to recover from the drought over the winter.
“Without a significant recharge of the soil moisture, groundwater, streams and reservoirs, conditions this summer could become catastrophic in these regions,” he said.
Before it comes to that, there is a resolve to hopefully ward off a worst-case scenario.
“Obviously, our work is focused on not letting us run out of water,” says EPD’s Chambers. “Public health and sanitation have first priority, a Drought Response Unified Command is in place with four different state agencies working on contingency plans, such as identifying the communities with the most serious supply problems and helping them with ways to improve infrastructure or to tie into other systems.”
Chambers also notes that the governor’s order that utilities and water permit holders reduce their water use by 10 percent not only met that goal but exceeded it.
“We’re encouraged,” he says. “People are reacting; they are responding and pulling together to try to conserve as much as they can.”
Mangum says the golf course industry needs to continue its education and outreach and also to involve its customers, players and members in the lobbying efforts for equal water-reduction standards.
A victory for common sense
Like their colleagues in Georgia, superintendents in Florida are up against extreme water shortages because of the drought in the Southeast and are also actively contending for their fair share.
The South Florida Water Management District, the oldest and largest of the state’s water agencies, which serves about 7.5 million people and more than a third of Florida’s 1,400-plus golf courses, imposed Phase 3 (“extreme”) water-use restrictions in mid-December and was expected to maintain that level at least through May.
The restrictions entail a 45 percent reduction on a monthly basis, require weekly reports and come on the heels of an agreement between superintendents and the SFWMD in which golf courses were given more sensible leeway in their use of water in the event of such action.
“In working very closely with the golf course industry, we’ve worked out an agreement whereby they can water anytime they want, anytime they deem most appropriate — they just have to achieve the 45 percent cutback,” says Jesus Rodriguez, the water district’s public information officer. He added that, as a whole through January, superintendents had exceeded the mandated reduction.
Superintendents in the area have responded in kind with a proposal to make the restrictions even more fair in their minds.
“We have a history of trying to work with the water district and we want to continue that. We’re working as a group (GCSA chapters) in south Florida trying to show them a different way of looking at things,” says Matt Taylor, Class A superintendent at Royal Poinciana Golf Club in Naples. “We have models of our last five years’ average (water use) and have taken a 45 percent reduction off that. We feel that’s a little more realistic.”
The price of development
On Jan. 15, the SFWMD took further measures by restricting residential landscape irrigation to one day a week in order to achieve an appropriate response across the board.
“The reality is, we don’t achieve the goal (45 percent) at the residential level; it’s difficult to enforce,” Rodriguez says.
The irony in Florida is that great portions of the state were drained to accommodate development.
“That’s frankly part of the current problem,” Rodriguez says. “We’ve created these huge residential areas with very limited water storage. It’s a longer-term problem that we’re going to have to address.”
Today, water management in Florida is totally dependent on groundwater refill. The resources also suffer from poor quality without rain to hold back salinity. South Florida also has the massive Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental U.S., which serves 400,000 acres of agricultural land and neighboring communities and is the backup source for all of the state’s lower east coast. But Okeechobee and its vast watershed has almost become a non-issue because the naturally shallow lake averages just 9 feet in depth in the best of times and by the end of January it was more than 4 feet below normal.
Alternatives and conservation
The water district is heavily promoting other water sources for key commercial users such as golf courses whose economic impact in Florida is huge. SFWMD features an alternative supply funding program and provides grants to help encourage the use of reclaimed water and also desalinization where technology is becoming more affordable and feasible and can be a viable option for tapping into the largely unused but brackish Florida aquifer.
Taylor notes that golf courses in the region are especially encouraged to turn to reclaimed water, and he estimates that about half of the golf facilities in south Florida plan to switch to effluent if the infrastructure is available. The main incentive? No restrictions.
Taylor irrigates 36 holes at Royal Poinciana with reclaimed water, but is quick to note that it’s not an unlimited resource. “We’re fortunate for now,” the 15-year GCSAA member says. “Sometimes you get enough and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes we have to go to our groundwater wells, and that’s under the restrictions. Another thing, we try to conserve as much as we can — it doesn’t help any of us if the courses on effluent are watering so much that they’re black/green.”
South Florida superintendents have taken other precautions, such as not overseeding to save water and increasing their use of wetting agents and hand-watering to increase efficiency, although the latter two practices add to maintenance budgets because of labor and material costs.
Many, like Taylor, are also reducing the amount of turf they irrigate.
“When I started here in 2000 we eliminated 15 acres of irrigated bermudagrass and replaced it with native grasses. No one really knew the difference and the water savings was tremendous,” he says, adding that to date he has reduced the maintained areas at Royal Poinciana by a total of 25 acres.
Meanwhile, SFWMD officials are peering into unknown territory. The forecast for more of the same puts them in an ominous position.
“It’s possible that somewhere down the road we’ll ask more of golf courses in cutbacks,” Rodriguez says, noting that the next stage, Phase 4 (“critical” water shortage), has never occurred before. No residential irrigation would be allowed, and users such as golf courses would be under 60 percent restrictions.
Taylor speaks for most in the industry when he says, “A 45 percent reduction is bad enough. A 60 percent cut is so scary you don’t want to think about it.”
Meeting the challenge …
Lee McLemore, CGCS at the Country Club of Birmingham in the heart of Alabama, is typical of superintendents who do what it takes during times such as the current drought in the Southeast, whether it’s abiding by governmental cutbacks or establishing voluntary conservation measures. Or both.
In Alabama, water-shortage issues have been dealt with for the most part at the local, or municipal, level. The CC of Birmingham, a landmark venue in the state’s largest city, features 36 holes and 230 acres of maintained turf. McLemore, a 22-year GCSAA member, uses six groundwater wells on the property that feed two irrigation lakes with a total capacity of 4 million gallons. He also supplements his needs by 30 percent with city water.
“It doesn’t add up to that much water,” he says. “Being an old Donald Ross course, we don’t have a lot of water storage and don’t have places to handle a lot of water storage.”
By that token, Birmingham, like most major cities in the region, has experienced considerable growth over the years without increasing its water resources. When the city instituted limited mandatory water restrictions during the height of the drought several months ago, McLemore, who has been at the club for two decades, cut his city water use by 80 percent and voluntarily reduced the nightly irrigation of his two courses from 750,000 gallons to 250,000 gallons.
… And moving forward
The ongoing drought has underscored some short- and long-term needs at CC of Birmingham, McLemore says. Among his conservation practices, he now only overseeds tees and areas on some short holes where iron play is concentrated. Plans are in place for a new and more efficient irrigation system. And, in an effort to become more self-sufficient, another goal is to add a third storage lake and possibly enlarge some of the facility’s man-made water features.
“Eventually, we would like to wean ourselves off city water under normal conditions,” he says, adding that reclaimed water is not an option for the 110-year-old club in the midst of the city where access to infrastructure for effluent is non-existent.
“The city water rate keeps going up and any time we have drought conditions like now, they seem to go after the green industry because it’s visible,” McLemore says. “If they would just make it fair and equitable, we’re willing to reduce and conserve as much as anybody, but let’s have everybody in the same boat.”
McLemore says he’ll continue to conserve as much as he can within his own resources through this spring and then take his chances come summer.
“I’m like most farmers, I guess. You’ve got to have faith when you put that seed in the ground that it’s going to be taken care of,” he says. “I really don’t get too excited if it gets too dry or if it gets too wet. I believe it’s all cyclical.”
Raleigh rock and a hard place
When it comes to golf courses getting their fair share, three private venues in Raleigh, N.C., are struggling against the odds to avoid the short end of the stick.
The facilities — Carolina Country Club, Raleigh Country Club and Brier Creek Country Club — all are on municipal water and have little or no supplemental sources. Last fall the city ordered Stage 1 water-use restrictions, and the clubs were cut back to irrigating only their greens.
Raleigh’s chief water resource is Falls Lake north of the city. By February, it was 9 feet below conservation level, and the city was seriously considering Stage 2 restrictions if conditions didn’t improve, which would prohibit the use of public water for all irrigation and would probably cut the three courses off completely.
Robert Young III, CGCS at Carolina CC, says that under the greens-only order he can water one cycle, about 30,000 gallons, anytime. He adds that the restrictions could be worse if he and others hadn’t offered a little common sense to city officials a few years ago.
“Back in 2005, when we were under a less-severe drought than now, we were under the same restrictions as the home-owners and trying to irrigate 95 acres,” the 17-year GCSAA member says. “We went to numerous city meetings trying to explain how that doesn’t work. During the alloted watering time, a homeowner could put down three-quarters of an inch a week for an acre yard while we were able to put down about a quarter of an inch a week. Now they take our five-year water-use average in a nondrought situation and during the different drought phases the golf course is cut back by a percentage and we can water any time we want.”
Scrambling to survive
But that bit of progress seems small now as the summer of 2008 looms in very problematic fashion. When interviewed for this article, Young was in the final stages of getting pump stations on line for three new wells that had been drilled on the Carolina CC property as a hedge against losing city water altogether. The caveat is that the wells are low producers, and he says they’ll provide only enough to water greens and tee tops.
“Out of the three wells, one can produce about 95 gallons a minute and the other two about 20 gallons a minute,” Young says. “When you’re running an irrigation system that requires 800 gallons a minute, that’s about a drop in the bucket. But it’s better than nothing, which is about what we’re looking at otherwise.”
Young, who has been at Carolina CC for 10 years, says because the course is in the middle of the city, tapping into a reclaimed water system is at least five years away because no access to reuse is nearby. A neighborhood-owned pond is close by and a possibility, but it would have to be dredged deeper, and the club would have to somehow replenish what it takes out.
He adds that if and when the city’s water storage rebounds, Carolina CC will still be under conservation restrictions — 80 percent of its normal water use.
“We’re kind of behind the eight ball in the next year or so,” Young says. “We’re not going to be able to do a whole lot as far as gaining any more water.”
Win or lose?
Young’s lament is the crux of the situation in the Southeast and the sign of the times nationwide — along with a realization that water in America has become a finite resource and not all that far removed from similar predicaments in meeting energy needs.
“I think people are going to start thinking of water as more of a commodity, like we do gasoline,” says NOAA’s LeComte. “We can’t take it for granted any more.”
There are no safe havens any more as the whims of Mother Nature collide with the activities of mankind. Years ago few would have thought the likes of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida would be in the dire straits they are now.
“Demands for water are increasing all over the U.S. — agriculture, recreation, the environment, municipal needs, development needs ... ,” says the drought mitigation center’s Hayes. “When you have a drought on top of it all, the conflict is exacerbated. We’re to the point where everybody needs to work together so there aren’t any big losers.”
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