Environmental leadership

GOLF STARS IN AN AWARD-WINNING ROLE AS THE ENVIRONMENTAL HERO

Combine a closed municipal dump with environmental problems, the City of Oakland, Calif., and CourseCo, a Petaluma, Calif.-based golf course management and development company, and what do you get? The answer is an environmental success story with golf playing the role of hero.

That's the story behind the 2003 opening of Oakland Metropolitan Golf Links, an 18-hole golf course that helped solve environmental issues, make a landfill site beautiful and useful for area residents, and was one of the facilities that led to CourseCo becoming the first-ever golf business to win California's top environmental award.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently presented CourseCo with the 2003 Governor's Environmental and Economic Leadership Award (GEELA). Established in 1993, GEELA is the state's highest and most prestigious environmental honor. It recognizes individuals, organizations and businesses that have demonstrated exceptional leadership in building public-private partnerships while making notable contributions to conserving California's environment.

"The award affirms that our work has public value, which is deeply gratifying," says CourseCo President Tom Isaak. "It further affirms that the expense and tremendous leadership effort of our superintendents, the primary implementers of these programs, is worthwhile."

Award recipients are selected for promoting excellence in compatible, sustainable economic development while protecting the environment and conserving natural resources. Criteria considered for the award include economic progress, innovation, uniqueness, results, transferability, environmental impact, resource conservation impact and environmental justice.

According to a state press release announcing the award, CourseCo "follows sustainable practices through the use of reclaimed water, development and cultivation of disease-resistant grasses, delineation of environmentally sensitive areas within course boundaries, promoting the use of native plant life and minimization of pesticides."

Raymond Davies, CGCS, CourseCo's director of golf course maintenance and construction and partner in the firm, says the minimization of chemical pesticides is a philosophy at all of the 13 facilities the company manages. Achieving that goal is possible through an Integrated Pest Management/Chemical Application Management Plans (IPM/CHAMPs) program and was a significant factor in the state's decision to recognize CourseCo.

Davies notes that for a golf course firm to receive an environmental award is particularly difficult in California because the environmental bar is higher than in most of the rest of the country. "This award helps recognize golf's ability to be sound environmental stewards," Davies says. "We've demonstrated that we can manage environment issues extremely well."

Creating Oakland's Metropolitan Golf Links

Davies says the goal at all CourseCo facilities is to benefit the game, the communities in which the courses are located, progressive golf-industry research and the superintendent profession. The public-private partnership created to build Oakland's Metropolitan Golf Links serves as a prime example.

According to its GEELA application materials, the city of Oakland and Port of Oakland selected CourseCo in early 2000 to build a course on a city landfill. The overall project had three major objectives: Seal an urban landfill to protect water quality; affordably dispose of 1.3 million cubic yards of dredge soils removed from port channels to ease shipping; and construct an economically viable championship golf facility on portions of the landfill property being closed by the city and port authority.

Closing the landfill and disposing of the bay-dredged soils in an environmentally acceptable manner were potentially expensive problems. Using synthetic material or importing clay soils to seal the 100-acre landfill would have been extremely costly. Additionally, the port authority was facing a cost of $10 million or more for remote disposal of the channel's dredge spoils, a task that would have required more than 50,000 truck and trailer loads hauled at least 40 miles to an approved depository. Undertaking both projects and building a new course on the former landfill, which at one time had accommodated a very basic course, was a formidable challenge.

The solution required a working partnership to overcome complex technical, political and logistical problems. Numerous legal agreements had to be worked out and those involved included multiple contractors and scores of technical and environmental consultants, engineers, designers, architects and lawyers.

The plan called for pumping dredged bay mud, mostly clay, from the nearby shipping channel to cap the landfill. The capped landfill then was shaped to the rough grade of a golf course. The rough grade was thinly plated with permeable sandy loam soils. Finally, drainage was created and irrigation installed to grow turfgrass. Irrigation water is a blend of reclaimed water and groundwater.