Dry but alive: Rethinking golf's green lawns

The debate about green golf courses in Arizona is nothing new. TV ads boasting green fairways can be immediately juxtaposed by news coverage asking if water is a factor in our water crisis. Season 3 of Tapped continues with an examination of the statehc:'s golf courses and their water use.

More from Tapped

Scroll through the story for more maps and charts showing Arizona golf course water usage.

Transcript

Ad Fades In: Fast, fun and affordable…

HC: You’ve seen it in every advertisement aimed at Midwest snowbirds…

Ad: Santa Catalina Mountains. The nine-hole course is the best in Oro Valley

HC: soft rolling hills of a green golf course, set against the backdrop of the Catalina mountains and desert scrub at sunset.

Ad: Check out Tucson City Golf, Southern Arizona’s best golf value…

HC: But in a state facing some of the biggest water concerns in the country, how does this sport make sense here?

12 News “They’re asking for the closure of golf courses, saying maybe that could help save water and alleviate the impending crisis…”

Arizona’s Family: “...so the question is often raised, how do we have so many gorgeous green golf courses, when water is at a premium?”

12 News “But are golf courses needlessly wasting precious water supplies as the drought gets worse?”

Z: To try to answer the question of the environmental and economic impact of golf, AZPM pulled a decade’s worth of water usage records from a large portion of Arizona’s golf courses….there’s well over 300 in the state.

Z: This is Tapped, a podcast about water. I’m Zac Ziegler.

HC: And I’m Hannah Cree.

Z: So what can a decade of water use data and some insight from people who know about the golf industry and the complexity of water firsthand tell us?

[Music fades out]

Z: If you’re a water official, there are two categories of golf courses in Arizona; those built before 1985, and those built after.

HC: That’s because of the Groundwater Code of 1980, passed by the legislature and enforced by the Arizona Department of Water Resources. Even 50 years ago, groundwater depletion was a serious concern, and the standards the code set for golf courses remain the same to this day.

HC: Tim Cloninger, a Golf Course Agronomist for Staples Golf Design in Scottsdale, says in some ways, Arizona is doing well.

TC: “You know Golf courses since 1985 in Arizona have really been built efficiently from a water use standpoint. The majority of the golf courses have been built after 1985.”

[music fades in]

Z: Now, we’re only talking about golf courses in the state within the six Active Management Areas, which were also formed under the Groundwater Code. These areas are often the state’s more populous regions, and rely heavily on groundwater, so they’re more actively monitored by the Department. They’re the reason we have a dataset for golf course water usage, since courses within these six areas are required to report their water usage every year.

HC: Any golf course built after 1985 had to comply with certain turf restrictions. The department sets these rules in terms of allotted acre-feet of water per hole. As of 1985, lawmakers decided each hole on any new golf course was allotted 23 acre-feet of water per year.

HC: Now, let’s take a step back and define some water jargon; An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or in simpler terms, enough water to cover an acre of land a foot deep.

Z: To put it another way, although water usage varies greatly, rough estimates from the Department say an acre-foot is about as much water as two or three Arizona households use per year. Or, given what’ll be on many people’s TVs in a couple of weeks, enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool halfway.

HC: Back to the golf course regulations. Bypassing some complicated math for us, and turf experts say that 23 acre-feet limit means 18-hole golf courses built after 1985 are capped at 90 acres of grass.

HC: And the enactment of the Groundwater Code did make golf courses smaller. According to Cloninger’s research, golf courses averaged over 100 acres of turf before 1985. After, the average size dropped to 83 acres.

[music fades out]

Z: By the way, yes this is a podcast from an NPR member station, and while you might expect to hear what we in the industry call natural sound, like hitting a golf ball [audio] . . .

or a ball going into the hole [audio] . . .

or sprinklers watering [audio] . . .

You won't, because we struggled to find golf courses in the state who would talk with us about this topic, and no one would talk to us at their course.

And by the way, so far in this episode, any of those sounds you’ve heard are stock sound effects.

Now, let’s get back on topic and talk about how water gets used, and how much of it is used on golf courses?

HC: The simplest takeaway from our dataset is that the total acre-feet used by golf courses over the last 10 years across the whole state has gone down, and by the most significant margins in the last three years.

HC: On the surface, that sounds like a good trend. And proof that recent allocation cuts from the department are having an impact. However, as we dug deeper into the data, the picture got more complicated.

Z: At first, we thought the data showed a majority of golf courses at or below their water allotments for the year, with a handful of bad actors in wealthy areas.

Z: At the top of our list were eight courses, seven of which are in Maricopa County, that were consistently above their allotments for the year, anywhere between 150 to 200% above their allotment, on average.

HC: However, as we reached out to some of these courses, we began to realize that the Department of Water Resources has some flaws in their database.

H: For example, Whisper Rock Golf Club in Scottsdale, was on average 200% over its annual allotment for the last decade.

H: But Whisper Rock’s General Manager of Golf Trent Rathbun says that has a pretty simple explanation

TR: “We have 36 holes of golf. And the ADWR only has us recorded for 18 holes. And we’ve been working with them for, gosh, it seems like the last 18 months to try to get that through.”

HC: Whisper Rock has had 36 holes since 2005, and the Department has yet to update the club’s allotment. However, Rathbun says even though they’re overusing in ADWR’s eyes, they haven’t received any fines or other consequences from the Department.

Z: A similar reporting error happened at our second-highest user, The Golf Club of Scottsdale.

Z: According to their website, the highly exclusive and very expensive Club has two 18-hole courses and a 9-hole course, bringing their total to 45. At 23 acre-feet per hole, that would bring that total allotment to about 1,035 acre-feet per year. But they’re only getting half of that, and this could be another example of a miscommunication with ADWR.

Z: Since they don't have updated information on the size of multiple Arizona golf courses, it’s not immediately obvious whether or not some courses are being responsible with water, while others aren’t.

Z: Besides the reporting mismatches, we also found a number of rules that make it easier for courses to use more.

Z: One of the easiest ways is if you happen to operate a golf course built before 1985. Those courses don’t have to comply with the 90 acres of turf limit.

HC: The other way to use more water is to use effluent.

HC: A lot of people refer to effluent as recycled or reclaimed water, since it often gets a second use on golf courses or municipal turf areas.

Z: Using effluent comes at a discount. Now it varies from AMA to AMA, so let's set up a hypothetical one. Say ours discounts effluent water to 40%, meaning the department counts it as less than half of the actual number. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons. So, using an acre-foot of effluent in our hypothetical AMA would only count as 130,000 gallons towards a course's allotment. And if that course used all effluent, then the allotment number may not apply at all.

HC: But course managers we talked to said effluent is harder to use because of its chemical and mineral composition, and requires specific infrastructure to set up. Because of that, certain management areas are better than others at using recycled water.

HC: According to the department data, Tucson’s water for golf courses is about half groundwater, half recycled water, with another small portion coming from the Colorado River. The Prescott area's golf course water, on the other hand, is 75 percent effluent.

[Music fades out]

Z: So how do courses ensure that they're being as efficient as possible with that water? We'll hear after the break.

MUSIC

Z: This is Tapped, a podcast about water. I'm Zac Ziegler.

HC: And I'm Hannah Cree.

HC: The golf course owners and industry insiders we spoke to said they want to be as water-efficient as possible, and many of their websites use their conservation endorsements as a selling point.

HC: Agronomy technology is a key part of this.

HC: Tim Clonginger says that the species of grass is nearly as important as the water used to grow it, especially in the desert.

TC: “Warm season grasses are much better suited on how they function to deal with heat, drought. They can withstand much higher temperatures use much less water in hot environments, hot climates.”

HC: Bermudagrass is ideal desert turf…native to tropical Africa, it’s best-growing temperature is about 100 degrees.

HC: Arizona’s peak golf season is in the fall and runs through the spring when those 100 degree temperatures finally ease up, but that schedule doesn’t line up with the Bermuda grass growing season,

TC: “Bermuda grass, if you just leave it alone, typically goes dormant around Thanksgiving early December, but goes brown if you didn't overseed it.”

H: Overseeding is a technique golf courses use to keep their grass green through the winter.

TC: So golf courses will typically go in late September October. Plant the ryegrass you know, the ryegrass germinates, it's established by mid-October end of October, and you have a green playing surface, you know, November to March where the Bermuda grass would be, at that point, dormant or semi-dormant.”

Z: That means that courses are nice and green in time for the snowbirds and winter tourists who are escaping from places where their courses are, at that time, covered in snow. But there’s a drawback, golf courses usually have to close for three weeks to overseed, and in Arizona, that would fall as the season starts to get going.

Z: Plus, getting that new seed to take root takes a lot of water.

Z: Clonginger says a relatively new trend in some courses is to skip overseeding and let the Bermudagrass go into its dormant state, where it dries out and turns a yellowish brown. It’s a trend that the industry calls “going blonde.”

Z: But, this practice mostly applies to courses that cater to local players, because to butcher a Marilyn Monroe movie title, tourists do not prefer blondes.

TC: “Local golf clubs where they have more of a year-round residents they might choose to not overseed, because they want their golf course to not close for overseed, and overseeding is not as important, but you know for tourism golf, you know the overseeding really helps.”

HC: And a healthy, bright green green is really important for courses that market themselves towards out of state players.

TC: “Most golf courses in Arizona are tourism-based golf courses where most of their play happens from November to March, April. And that's when they need to, look good, play good. And overseeding provides you know that excellent look and playing conditions throughout the winter.”

HC: Bri Kenny is the environmental science manager for Troon, one of the biggest golf course management companies in the US… they also operate the five courses owned by Tucson City Golf.

HC: But five years ago, she never would have guessed she’d end up in the golf industry. She knew nothing about it when she started working at a country club, and even she had some of the same concerns of massive green patches in the middle of the desert.

BK: “Before I started working with golf, I thought that they were using the majority of the water in the state and that they didn't really have much of a thought process about how they applied the water, because to me, I just assumed more water meant more lush looking grass.”

Z: “Lush” is probably the wrong word, she says, because

BK: “More water leads to disease and leads to squishy grass, which is exactly what you don't want on a golf course. And then additionally, like it's extra, it's extra money, it means you'd have to apply more chemicals to fix the issues that you've caused by over watering.”

Z: In reality, water is a fine balance.

BK: “Basically you're striving to be dry but alive. So you want to push that limit of how dry can you make the grass without it dying because that rolls better. Even here in the desert, the turf grass species are meant to survive in these conditions. So they're giving you that flexibility to push those limits.”

Z: Water officials in Arizona who work with golf course managers told us they hear the same thing; they’re really interested in reducing their water use

HC: And Clonginger says there have been significant scientific advances in the last ten years that have helped improve water efficiency. He explains that the transition period when the Bermudagrass starts to come back is key, because two competing grasses require more water.

TC: Transitioning ryegrass out early has changed a lot in the last five to 10 years. There's more products available that will slowly regulate the ryegrass and really encourage Bermuda grass to start growing. It really it comes down to a competition where you have the ryegrass growing on top of the Bermuda grass, you know the Bermuda grass is underground below coming back from its stolons and rhizomes and slowing down that ryegrass and regulating it early in the year, early in the spring really allows the Bermuda grass to, come back and establish quicker into the season.

[music fades in]

HC: One of the clubs we mentioned earlier, The Golf Club of Scottsdale, offers a 30 thousand dollar three-day experience that includes custom-fitted golf clubs and outfits, private dinners, spa service, and of course, unlimited golf games. If the price tag wasn’t prohibitive enough for you, you have to submit an application online for a chance invitation, or be lucky enough to know someone in the 500 member club.

HC: The other Scottsdale course we mentioned, Whisper Rock, has an initiation fee of $130,000.

Z: This is a long-winded way of saying, golf can be expensive.

HC: And, if you want to try to look at a $130 thousand dollar price tag more positively, golf brings a lot of money into the state.

Z: We wanted to see exactly how much golf impacts Arizona’s economy. To do this, we compared the payoff of water in three different industries.

Z: To compare the water bang-for-your-buck, we looked for reports that estimated an industry’s economic impact, which usually came from industry groups like the Arizona Alliance for Golf or the Arizona Farm Bureau. The water numbers came from the state government.

Z: Agriculture, which accounts for most of the state’s water use, brings in about $700 per acre-foot of water used.

Z: Golf brings in $25,000 for each acre-foot used. It helps that the sport is a tourism draw in its prime season, so it has indirect spending on things like travel, hotels, restaurants, etc.

Z: But, compare that to the state’s relatively small manufacturing industry, which produces about $164,000 of economic impact with an acre-foot of water.

Z: Now, let’s not read into those numbers too much into an industry’s value to the state. Food production is necessary because we all HAVE to eat. We can’t rip up all the farms in favor of golf courses, and we can’t rip up all the golf courses in favor of factories.

Z: But, from an economic standpoint, golf courses have value.

[music fades out]

HC: It’s worth noting that in 2025, golf courses will undergo another pretty steep cut in their water allotment from the state; On top of the cuts that went into effect this year, it brings the total reduction in supply to 4% in the last two years.

HC: Those cuts could mean that even more innovation in technology and conservation is needed to ensure the sport can continue in Arizona in the decades to come.

Z: So, while golf is using technology to help lower its quantity of water used, what about quality?

Arizona is a place steeped in military tradition. In fact, its first-ever territorial capitol, Fort Whipple, was an army post.

But, in Tucson and other places, that military presence during the 20th century brought with it groundwater contamination, as industrial chemicals from bases leached into the soil, causing the federal government to declare some areas hazardous waste sites.

So what’s being done to ensure that the water we have can be made safe once again? That’s next time.

Tapped is a production of AZPM News.

This episode was written and reported by Hannah Cree, with data reporting and audio mixing by me, Zac Ziegler.

It was edited by our News Director, Christopher Conover.

Our theme music and some interstitial music is by Michael Greenwald.

Visit our website in the podcast section of azpm.org for graphics, links, and more. Thanks for listening.

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