than your regular ol’ local municipal
golf course, we immediately became
intrigued,” City Manager JJ Murphy
says. “Now that we’ve had a chance
to see the vision begin to come to life,
there’s an excitement for this course I
have not seen before. I love how this
golf course will begin to bring our
community together around golf.”
The other aspect of the Hobbs
project is its approach to the design
and maintenance of the golf course
itself. Staples is working with
irrigation designer Don Mahaffey on
a radical approach to watering and
the treatment of the edges of the
maintained area.
“The playable areas will all be dwarf
bluegrass,” says Staples. “But between
those areas and the native grasses,
we have a 10-25 foot buffer zone of
buffalograss/bluegrass mix. These
areas will not consciously get irrigation
throw, but in a windy area like this,
inevitably some water will fall on them.
Que sera, sera. If an area gets water,
the bluegrass will thrive. In another,
the buffalograss will dominate. It
will help us create a natural looking
edge to the golf course, but also to
reduce the amount of maintained turf.
Don gives me the ability to look at
irrigation specifically in the context of
how the golf course is designed. He
doesn’t design to lines on paper, he
designs to the field. He lets things
evolve and go where they need to.”
In Birmingham, Ala., Bill Bergin,
ASGCA Associate, has recently
completed a major water management
project at the
Hoover Country Club
,
the home of the LPGA Tour’s
Birmingham Centennial Golf Classic
from 1972-82.
“Formerly, the club watered the
course directly from a well, pumping
straight into the irrigation system,”
says Bergin. “The superintendent
kept a close record of the well’s
capacity, and found it to be
diminishing. So, to gain some water
independence for the club, we have
created three ponds, totaling 2.77
acres, all of which are tied together
through equalization pipes. They give
us almost five million gallons of water
storage. The well continues to feed
the ponds, but we have also created a
flow through system from a tributary
to the creek. We installed a trench
drain across the bottom of a concrete
flume and water gravity fed our main
irrigation pond before exiting over a
concrete weir.
“In the past, the course, which is in
a floodplain and rather flat, drained
very poorly,” Bergin says. “Every time
there was rain, the course became
waterlogged, but it didn’t do anything
for the irrigation well. So we added 150
drainage inlets, feeding into ponds,
and reducing the pressure on the well.
Permitting was very challenging, given
we were in a floodplain, but the result
has been extremely positive.”
Meanwhile, up in Canada, ASGCA
Past President Doug Carrick, along
with his associate Steve Vanderploeg,
is constructing a new eighteen-hole
course, designed from the start to
be irrigated only with stormwater
captured on the property and
effluent water. Located in Stouffville,
Ontario, not far from Toronto, the
Lebovic Golf Club
project has been a
remarkable 18 years in the making.
Although the economic situation
played a part in the project’s lengthy
genesis, it was planning disputes
that caused the greatest headaches.
In order to finally win permits, the
developers donated land to the
Toronto Regional Conservation
Agency, and also made some fairly
stringent agreements on water usage.
“The course actually sits on one of the
largest aquifers in the region,” says
Vanderploeg. “But, as a condition of
the permit, it is not allowed to pull
from the aquifer at all.”
The developers are building 75
houses as part of the project, and have
built a dedicated sewage treatment
plant. But 75 homes do not produce
enough effluent water to irrigate a
golf course, so Carrick and his team
COVER STORY
10
|
By Design
The Lebovic golf project near Toronto, Canada will only use stormwater and effluent
I love how this golf course will begin to
bring our community together around golf
JJ Murphy, City Manager, Hobbs, New Mexcio
