Program Works Toward Greener Golf Courses

  • Centennial Acres Golf Course in Sunfield, Michigan has increased protections for employees who mix and load chemicals, and has learned how to apply pesticides correctly. (Photo by Erin Toner)

Golf courses are among the biggest water users in the country,
and they use a lot of pesticides and fertilizers that could end up in waterways. The potential for pollution is growing as golf becomes more popular around the world. But thousands of golf courses are working to become certified as environmentally-friendly. The GLRC’s Erin Toner reports on a program that helps golf courses comply with environmental laws, save money, and become more natural:

Transcript

Golf courses are among the biggest water users in the country, and they use a lot of
pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that could end up in waterways. The potential for
pollution is growing as golf becomes more popular around the world. But thousands of
golf courses are working to become certified as environmentally-friendly. The GLRC’s
Erin Toner reports on a program that helps golf courses comply with environmental laws,
save money, and become more natural:


I’m at Centennial Acres Golf Course in Sunfield, Michigan and it’s a perfect summer day:
the sky is a deep blue, the air is warm and it smells like grilled hot dogs. The hot dogs
are for military veterans here for a golf outing. The outing hasn’t started yet, but already
most of the day’s work on the course is finished. The fairways and the greens have been
sprayed and mowed, and a couple of high school kids are washing the mowers and
parking them in a big garage.


(Sound of sprayer)


Debbie Swartz is the director of the Michigan Turfgrass Environmental Stewardship
Program at Michigan State University. It certifies golf courses that have completed a list
of environmental improvements. Today, Swartz is doing a follow-up visit at Centennial
Acres to check on the course’s progress. She’s watching how the staff is cleaning the lawn
mowers:


“The problem is that you need to get rid of the water and you need to get rid of the
clippings. And years ago, a very easy solution would be to take this operation and put it
as close to a river as possible. And we’ve learned over the years that that’s not
appropriate. You’re loading a waterway with nutrients and so we needed to come up with
solutions on how we could clean equipment in an environmentally-sound way.”


Swartz says Centennial Acres is doing it the right way. The mowers are being cleaned on
a cement pad to reduce runoff. Clippings are first blown off the machines with air
sprayers so fewer pesticides end up in the water. Then, the clippings and the water are
applied to the golf course. This is one of many changes the course has made after
enrolling in the Environmental Stewardship Program. It also installed cement pads and
walls around its fuel tanks and it built barriers around wellheads to guard against
groundwater pollution. Josh Mattice is the golf course superintendent. He says he was
surprised at all the things he needed to work on:


“Absolutely, there was a lot of stuff that that’s the way it’s been for years and you really
don’t pay much attention to it and when somebody else brings it up it kind of turns a light
bulb on and says oh, geez, you know, that’s a good idea, or that’s something that we need
to look into.”


Mattice says the biggest change was protecting ponds and creeks on the course from
chemicals. To do that, he stopped mowing right up to the water’s edge and let those areas
grow naturally, weeds and all. The vegetation serves as a buffer, trapping chemicals
before they get into the water. Mattice says these overgrown areas were kind of tough at
first for the golfers because perfectly manicured courses have been the gold standard in
golf:


“It was rough at first, ha, ha, that’s for sure. But now that they’ve gotten used to it and
understand the reasoning behind it, they’re all for it. They’ve learned to appreciate the
natural beauty.”


Now, 15 acres on the golf course never get mowed, saving gas and money. Similar
buffers zones are being created at nearly all the golf courses in the stewardship program.


(Sound of golf swing)


Paul McCoy is teeing off at Centennial Acres. He’s been a member here for 15 years, and
he golfs every single day. McCoy says he doesn’t mind the natural buffers because they’re
mostly out-of-play areas anyway. And he likes the wildlife they attract:


“When I’m out on the course every day and I see turkeys all over the place, like I did
today, eight turkeys. Yesterday I saw two bucks out there with the velvet steel on the
horns. And I’ve seen the hawks nest out there with two hawks, a mother hawk and I see
that everyday I think it’s a great place to be right here on this golf course.”


About a quarter of Michigan’s 900 golf courses are enrolled in the Environmental
Stewardship Program. Audubon International has a similar certification program, with
more than 2 thousand golf courses enrolled worldwide.


It costs a couple hundred dollars a year for courses to be involved in these programs. But
the cost is pretty low compared to potential fines for violating environmental rules. The
program’s also helping to bring in business for some courses. Already this summer, a
handful of groups have booked Centennial Acres for their golf outings specifically
because the course has been certified as a friend of the environment.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Coastal Development Pressures

  • Construction along the shorelines can put a strain on natural systems. (Photo by Carole Swinehart/Michigan Sea Grant Extension)

One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:

Transcript

We’re continuing our look at ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’
Lester Graham is our guide through the series. He says the
experts who were surveyed to determine the threats say rapid
development is among the problems affecting the lakes:


One of the more subtle but relentless threats to the Great Lakes is
coastal development. Condos, ever larger and nicer beach homes
and buildings and parking lots in the watershed all have an
impact on the Lakes. As the population grows and the suburban
lifestyle keeps spreading, the health of the lakes is compromised
in countless tiny ways. Reporter Peter Payette finds those tiny
ways all add up:


Greg Reisig is standing at the edge of a 20-acre construction site
just down the street from the shore Lake Michigan.


Below him is a man-made pond a few hundred feet long. It was a
dry summer around here, but the pond is full.


In fact, Reisig says the water level is always the same.


“And that indicates there’s a lot of ground water flowing
here…there’s a lot of water in this pond and you can see what
was a whole big wetland complex…there’s a lot of cedar and red
osier dogwood…all the wetland plants.”


There are no wetlands here now.


The site in northern Michigan was excavated for homes a few
years ago.


But now the Army Corps of Engineers says the wetlands that
were here need to be restored. A few acres likely will be
restored. But Reisig says almost the whole site was wetlands
once. He expects it will soon be a subdivision with not much
more than a drainage ditch connecting it to Lake Michigan.


“What will that do to the amount of flow of water going into the
bay? Because of hard road surfaces, hard driveways, roofs,
buildings and supposedly fertilized lawns. What will happen to
the water and how will that increase the flow to the bay?”


The developer’s attorney says this is nonsense. Matt Vermetten
says this land was heavily farmed and mined for clay.


“There are pockets of quote unquote wetland and those are there
because of excavation for clay. So is this a wetland complex of
the nature we speak of when we typically speak of such a thing? I
think not.”


Disputes like this are becoming more common around the Great
Lakes. John Nelson is the baykeeper with the Grand Traverse
Bay Watershed Center. The bay off Lake Michigan and attracts a
lot of people. But Nelson says development doesn’t have to be a
problem.


He says the problem is people don’t think about the ecology of
the lakes. For example, east of Traverse City, Michigan, resorts
dominate the coastline. Along the beach, thick stands of sedges
and rushes extend out a few hundred feet. But the sections of
dark green marsh alternate with stretches of clean sand and white
lawn chairs.


(birds calling on beach)


Nelson grew up here and says this part of the lake was never a
sugar sand beach.


“They’ve located in a coastal marsh. Instead of celebrating and
dealing with that they’ve chosen to see it as they would like to
have it and then change it.”


The impacts of the changes are cumulative. Fish and wildlife
habitat is fragmented. The natural filtering properties of the
wetlands are gone.


So every time the city gets a rain shower all the dust and grime
and pollution are washed right into the lake.


Census data show people are leaving many of the Great Lakes
coastal cities and spreading out along the coastline. But it’s not
clear how local governments should plan for the growth.


Mike Klepinger studies land use planning for the Michigan Sea
Grant program. He says it’s hard to make direct connections
between a healthy lake and particular land uses.


“We are getting more planning along the shoreline than we had
thirty years ago in the state. The number of counties and number
of townships that have a plan has gone up, for example. But we
don’t know whether those plans are really doing any good.”


And it’s hard to implement good planning on a broad basis. In
any area, dozens of different local governments might have
independent control over development.


Multiply that by the number cities, townships and counties along
the coasts of the Great Lakes… and it’s hard to see how it all can
be managed so that enough coastline habitat is preserved.


For the GLRC, I’m Peter Payette.

Related Links

Part 1: Selling the Family Farm to Developers

  • A former farm field in Central Ohio ready for development. It's an increasingly common sight in this area. This land is right next door to a dairy. Worried about his new neighbors, the farmer is planning to sell. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than 9-thousand acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their land. In the first of a two-part series on farmers and the decisions they make about their land, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made the difficult choice to sell:

Transcript

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks
and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than nine-thousand
acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their
land. Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made that difficult choice:


At a busy intersection in a newly suburban area, a red barn and white house sit back
off the road. Lush green pasture land hugs the old farm buildings. But the days are
numbered for this bucolic scene.


(sound of construction)


Across the street dozens of condos are under construction… and farmer Roy Jackson has
put this 216-acre farm in Central Ohio under option for development. As soon as the
developer gets approval to build, Jackson’s farm will be no more.


“I’m a third generation farmer and you put your roots down and to see your land be
developed is something I have seen coming, but to actually see it happen across the
road; it’s a sad thing, but it’s progress.”


Sitting on his front porch, Jackson looks our on a neighborhood where once there were farms.


Jackson: “At one point we farmed over 1500 acres and now we’re down to about 300.”


Keith: “What happened?”


Jackson: “We’ve lost a lot of it to development. In the estate of my mom and dad
we had to sell that to settle the estate and that was part of it as well.”


Like many in agriculture, Jackson didn’t own all the land he farmed. He was leasing
it and when the owner decided to sell for development, Jackson was out of luck. Now
he says there’s not enough land left to farm profitably.


“I have a son that wants to farm with me and to do it here, there just isn’t enough
land to sustain two families and make a living for both.”


So, he’s found a big piece of land down in Kentucky, in an area where land is still
plentiful and development pressures are distant. He’s leasing it with an option to buy.
Soon Jackson and his son will have the cattle ranch they’ve been planning for years.
It just won’t be in the state where his family has farmed for three generations.


(sound of heavy machinery)


Workers operate backhoes to grade the ground in an open field that will eventually
be home to some seven-thousand people in a new development. Retired farmer and
agriculture educator Dick Hummel recently sold a portion of this land, allowing
the project to move forward.


“I had some people critical of me because I was going to sell farmland, but on
the other hand, I really didn’t. I traded. You just have to accept that in this
community because that’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has happened. Plus
the fact, it’s been pretty tough farming and this has given a lot of farmers a
chance to sell some land for some excellent prices.”


Hummel sold about 100 acres of farmland and bought some new land – 77 acres –
farther out in the country. His father had bought what Hummel calls the “home farm”
in 1935, and that family history weighed heavily on Hummel when he was deciding what
to do.


“It was harder to decide to sell that land because it had been in my family for many
generations than it was the agricultural part.”


His father bought the land for 100 dollars an acre and Hummel was able to sell it
for a whole lot more. Asked why he sold, Hummel’s answer is simple.


“The offer. I hadn’t thought about selling at all. I didn’t even know that they
would want any of this particular land ’till all at once there were others that
were selling for a price. I heard about that, and first thing I knew, a heck of
a lot of land in this area was selling. So you compare notes as to prices, et
cetera and so forth, and that’s how it happens.”


Hummel says he wasn’t pressured to sell. He’s well past retirement age, and
he says it was the right decision personally. And such is the case for most
farmers who sell their land for development, says Sara Nikolich, Ohio director
with American Farmland Trust.


“You’ve got acres of farmland that can be sold for 20, 30,000 dollars an acre at times.
For a lot of farmers that’s their retirement they’re sitting on, and when you have
development surrounding you and you don’t have any public policy to promote agriculture
and perhaps you don’t have any heirs, you don’t have any options available to you other
than development.”


And so, the personal decisions of individual farmers are transforming some of the
nation’s rural landscape into suburban landscapes.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links