Drowning in drought news with the rest of California, Coachella Valley golf courses are working to redefine water use practices in order to stay solvent and playable while remaining a national draw.
Home to 122 public and private sites across a span of fewer than 50 miles, the courses of the Valley are mass consumers of a declining resource, accounting for approximately a quarter of the groundwater annually pumped across the region.
Recent numbers from the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) report that 69 desert courses irrigate with groundwater while 53 use recycled water or canal water from the Colorado River. Buoyed by a large underground aquifer (think tens of trillions of gallons), it should be noted that the Palm Springs’ region isn’t blindly sucking the ground dry.
Missioned by the Coachella Valley Water Management Plan of 2010, which set a goal of reducing course water usage by 10 percent (and recently increased to 17 percent) by 2020, the region’s golf and municipality leadership took a swing tip from Los Angeles and San Diego conservation efforts in concert with the Southern California Golf Association by creating the Coachella Valley Golf & Water Task Force in 2014.
With Gov. Jerry Brown’s April mandate calling for statewide cuts in urban water use, the language trickling down to Valley consumption is being met with conservation efforts evolved from a goal-driven drive to mandatory proportions. Charged with the State Water Resources Control Board’s maximum water use reductions of 36 percent, the CVWD and desert courses appear driven to meet the measures.
Nearly four months prior to Brown’s mandate, the CVWD introduced its first turf removal rebate program for golf courses. Funded by a state grant, the program offered applicants $15,000 per acre of turf removed, up to a maximum of seven acres. The program came a year after CVWD answered Brown’s State of Emergency water declaration with a $1/square foot turf removal “buy back” program aimed at homeowners and businesses.
In short order, 18 Valley courses applied for the turf removal program, accounting for an amount projected at $1.1 million in rebates awarded.
“I was actually really impressed with the number of golf courses that submitted applications,” said Heather Engel, director of communications and conservation for the CVWD. “Because we had a very small time frame.”
According to Engel, the number of area courses applying looks to increase should the opportunity be offered again.
“From what I understand, there are a number of golf courses that have said that they weren’t able to get their plans turned around quickly, but they’re ready,” she said. “They now have plans in place so the next time that funding is available, they’re ready to take advantage of it.”
Altering a golf property, especially one of destination-specific renown, requires more than a shovel and a few strong men. The process of conservation ultimately costs money to keep money. Moreover, using less water and taking out turf on desert courses is a drop-by-drop marriage of maintaining a vision of what Palm Springs is known to be, meeting player expectations and sating memberships and homeowners who bought into said visions and expectations.
During the January playing of the PGA Tour’s Humana Challenge at PGA West in La Quinta, the grounds debuted a seasonal, two-tone look with dormant rough contrasting lush fairways. While the two courses were being played in the tournament rotation for a final time – and though the presentation wasn’t necessarily intended as a statement on the zeitgeist – a national television audience, commentators and spectators took note of what they were seeing.
Serving as president of the Hi-Lo Desert Chapter of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America since 2013, Dean Miller’s implementation of dormant rough is one of the conservation tools in his purview of reducing water usage. Of the 18 Valley courses in the process of receiving the CVWD’s removal rebate, four are under his watch.
“What we want to do is introduce our memberships and our guests to some of the concepts that we’re looking at,” said Miller, who is also director of agronomy at PGA West and La Quinta Resort & Club. “And a good way for us to do that is through the turf removal rebate program and put in areas that show players the futures of what we’re seeing as a design for the courses. … I think it’s going to take strategically taking out grass behind tee boxes and behind greens. Your backdrops may look a little bit different, but the overall aspect of the golf courses, you can still keep that area intact.”
While working to maintain playability, Miller is careful to recognize the importance of keeping the Valley’s singular golf identity and his grounds’ diversity intact.
“For us, with nine golf courses, our draw is that we’ve got different designers and different styles and we don’t want to lose that by putting in the exact same thing on every course,” Miller said about the PGA West and La Quinta venues. “We want them to have that experience by feeling like they’re going out and playing different courses.”
Aesthetics play a further role in seeking removal of turf considered nonessential to play.
“There’s definitely a fine balance of what we’re trying to achieve, with ultimate water savings, but still not be like the other deserts,” Miller said. “With the Coachella Valley, we still have a differentiation which makes it unique to the people who live here.”
Twenty miles away, Desert Princess Country Club in Cathedral City took advantage of the seven-acre maximum in its turf removal application. The removal across the club’s 27 holes serves as a coupling with Desert Princess’s ongoing process of removing more than 60,000 square feet of turf around non-golf property via CVWD’s “buy back” program.
For Desert Princess superintendent Jonas Conlan, the removal rebates are as much about redefining the look of the property as it is bottom-line math he says can save the club up to $200,000 by not putting in new sprinklers where turf is removed.
“You take that money and then the $105,000 that they’re going to give us for taking the turf out, that gives a figure of around $225,000 or so to work with,” said Conlan, a former president of the desert’s Hi Lo Chapter who also wonders: “Can we put desertscape in there for that amount of money?”
As Valley golfers start to see drought-driven changes of less turf and former green outlying areas turning brown, Conlan knows that not everyone will be happy.
“My personal opinion is that everybody is going to have to make some sort of adjustment,” he said. “When I first came out here in the late ’90s, during the golf building boom, I was amazed at the amount of green, lush grass going in to a lot of these courses.”
And that, for all intents and purposes, can no longer be done.
“The bottom line is that if you keep depleting your bank account,” Conlan said, “sooner or later you’re going to end up with no money.”
Akin to the communal aspect of the Golf & Water Task Force, Conlan says that the solvency of desert golf is dependent on keeping an eye on future scorecards.
“It’s going to be a slow change that’s taking place, but you have to look at what’s this place going to look like in 20 or 30 years,” he said. “If you’re going to be around here for a while and think that the Valley is going to be a successful place to live or vacation, people have to understand that there are going to be some changes over time. Otherwise, I think it’s going to be the death of this Valley. Some golfers are accepting of that and some still want what they bought into 20 years ago. People can have their opinion, but the reality is there’s only so much water that can be reasonably used.”
