By: Ian James

Strong opposition in the Legislature has scuttled a bill that would have required agencies in California to release information about water use by businesses such as farms and golf courses.

With the bill’s demise in the Senate, water districts will be able to continue keeping confidential information about how much water businesses are using during the drought.

Assembly member Mark Stone, who backed the measure, said there weren’t enough supporters in the Senate to take up the bill for a vote.

“There are some organizations out there that are claiming that all this is intending to do is shame private users, give away trade secrets, which is nonsense,” said Stone, a Democrat who represents the Monterey Bay area. “There are too many senators that are afraid of what the opposition is saying and they’re not listening any further. So it’s a hard conversation to have right now.”

The bill, AB 1520, faced opposition from a long list of groups representing water districts, agriculture and other businesses. They included the Association of California Water Agencies, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association and the California Farm Bureau Federation, among others.

The bill had been introduced last year in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, which Stone chairs, and was approved in June by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In its initial version, the bill would have made public information about how much water and energy is used by businesses and institutions. The bill was later amended to drop energy use, leaving its focus solely on water. But that change wasn’t nearly enough to win over enough supporters in the Senate.

Stone said he still thinks the public ought to have access to this sort of data, especially in light of the historic drought, and he will consider whether to take up similar legislation next year.

The bill was backed by organizations including the First Amendment Coalition, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability.

In 2014, the First Amendment Coalition sued the Coachella Valley Water District and the Desert Water Agency after they stopped releasing detailed information about groundwater pumping by large customers such as farms, golf courses, housing developments and resorts.

DWA later settled the case and resumed disclosing pumping data for businesses and organizations. CVWD, however, won the case in Riverside County Superior Court, with the judge backing its argument that the district didn’t need to disclose the data.

CVWD stopped releasing that information in 2014 after The Desert Sun published the names of some of the area’s biggest water users. The water district’s managers also denied requests for the data, saying they believe all of their customers are entitled to privacy, whether they are individuals or businesses.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, has argued that while state law makes clear residential customers’ data should be kept confidential, information about the large quantities of water used by businesses should not be kept secret.

Read the full article here.

By: Matt Stevens

California may be in its fifth year of drought, but on Tuesday, state water regulators effectively turned back the clock to 2013.

By: Marty James

By: Larry Bohannan, The Desert Sun

For golf course architect John Fought, taking two lakes out of the South Course at Ironwood Country Club in Palm Desert as part of a water-reduction project makes perfect sense.

“Water is an unnatural hazard in the desert,” said Fought, a noted architect who has contracted with Ironwood to oversee the turf removal project at the 36-hole facility in the hills of south Palm Desert.

With California still in the grips of a statewide drought and with state mandates for water reduction still in force, Ironwood is among numerous desert golf courses working to cut water usage through a variety of methods. At Ironwood, course officials are removing 10.45 acres of turf and surface water this summer, part of a three-year plan to eliminate 40 acres of irrigated turf and surface water from the South Course’s 239 acres.

Josh Tanner, general manager at Ironwood, believes the turf reduction and updated irrigation systems will propel Ironwood well past the mandated 25 percent reduction the state wants.

The efforts at Ironwood and other desert golf courses come as a Desert Sun analysis of water district data found that golf courses in the Coachella Valley reduced water usage just 8 percent in the 12-month period ending in May compared to the same period ending in 2013. That’s short of the 25 percent state reduction mandates.

Mark Cupit, head golf superintendent at Ironwood, said the removal of the 13 acres of turf last year led to a reduction from 2,110.9 acre feet of groundwater for 2014-15 to 1,698.7 acres feet in 2015-16, according to Coachella Valley Water District meter readings. That’s a savings of 412.2 acre-feet, or 19.5 percent year over year. One acre-foot is 325,850 gallons of water. Ironwood, above the desert floor in Palm Desert, pumps its water from underground since Colorado River water and recycled water are not available to the course.

Fought, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour who has designed or renovated more than two dozen courses across the country, including the Players Course at Indian Wells Golf Resort, believes such turf reduction and water savings must be achieved without impacting the playability of the South Course, the home each spring of a U.S. Open local qualifying tournament. That’s a consideration in turf reduction that is important to golfers, though it might be lost on non-golfers.

“You are not a bull in a china closet. You don’t just blow everything up,” Fought said. “We are trying to do it in a way where, I think when they get everything done, it will be considerably better.”

When Ironwood took out 13 acres of turf in 2015, it was all grass. This year, the project includes taking out two lakes on the golf course, one on the par-3 fourth hole and another on the par-5 fifth hole. Those lakes had a combined 1.2 acres of surface areas.

“The water district told us we were losing about six feet of water a year just through evaporation from a lake that was just sitting there,” Fought said. Tanner pointed out that the liners in the lakes were old, so they likely were leaking water as well, adding to the water loss.

The rest of the work is on reducing turf in non-playing areas, either grassed areas between holes or areas on holes where golf balls rarely, if ever, land. For that work, Fought’s background as an architect makes the work perhaps different than other turf-reduction projects.

“Landscape architects know more about plants, but they don’t really know where to take the turf out. They just see green and they figure it is all the same,” Fought said. “It’s not on a golf course. I have worked a lot in Arizona, and you’ve got to have turf where people hit the ball off line the most, which is in the tee shot landing zone. So those areas are a little bigger and other areas that are not played, those we can take out. And we can plant a lot more drought-tolerant plants or just go straight sand and decorate it with more native-type vegetation.”

Tanner said that while the current work is not a direct response to state mandates over the current drought, the Ironwood membership approved the work because of a growing awareness even four years ago that water usage and expenditures needed to be reduced.

“We commissioned John over four years ago to create drawings and construction plans to do this,” Tanner said. “It went through the committee process for two years, vetted it, did the financial analysis, brought it to the members for a vote and the members approved it. The members were very supportive of converting turf and using less water.”

While the water savings are immediate, the financial return for Ironwood will take a little longer. Tanner said the turf-reduction project is costing Ironwood $27,000 an acre, including removal of the turf, changing irrigation heads to drip irrigation and buying and planting drought-resistant plants. The project is also taking out 117 water-thirsty trees and replacing them with 107 water-friendly ironwood and mesquite trees.

Even with CVWD incentives of $15,000 per acre of removed turf up to seven acres, Ironwood loses money on the direct turf replacement. But Tanner said the club estimates a return on investment – reductions in water and electricity costs, fertilizers and other chemicals and man hours from reduced mowing and no autumn overseeding in the new native areas – of $5,000 a year per acres once the work is done.

Other courses look to save water

Ironwood is hardly alone in working on turf removal and irrigation updates at desert courses. At the 36-hole Mountain Vista Golf Club at Sun City Palm Desert, golf course superintendent Tyler Truman reports a reduction of 410 acre-feet of water usage between the 2013-14 and 2015-16 fiscal years.

“We are looking at select areas of the golf course and moving them over from turf to desert landscaping,” said Truman, who has been at Mountain Vista for five years. Truman oversees all 500 acres of turf on the golf courses, parks and common areas at the community as well as all desert landscaped areas.

An example of how water can be saved is one acre of turf on the seventh hole of Mountain Vista’s San Gorgonio course. Truman’s staff removed the grass as well as 20 sprinkler heads that put out eight gallons of water per minute. For a 10-minute watering, that was 1,600 gallons of water. With 217 new drip irrigators for plants in the area using just two gallons a minute, the savings for a 10-minute watering is 1,166 gallons of water.

This summer, Truman and his staff have removed that acre of turf, about three acres near the Mountain Vista clubhouse with more acres scheduled to be removed later this summer. Truman added that seven years ago, all the lakes on the Mountain Vista Santa Rosa Course were drained to replace old liners that were allowing water to leak into the ground. That course will get a new, more efficient irrigation system next spring, he said.

But if these courses are working on savings of up to 20 percent in some cases, why is the overall water reduction in the Desert Sun analysis just 8 percent over 2013 levels? According to Craig Kessler of the Southern California Golf Association, Ironwood is the exception at the moment, not the rule.

“Ironwood is a bit of an outlier,” said Kessler, director of government affairs for the SCGA. “They have been at this for four or five years. Most of the courses have only been taking dead aim at the problem in the last two years. There is a lag time at most golf courses of two or three years. Ironwood is a dramatic example. They have removed a lot of turf and have seen results.”

Kessler, who said he agrees with the Desert Sun’s number of just an 8 percent water reduction by desert golf courses since 2013, said he is confident that number will rise as courses begin making changes that have taken a year or so to plan and in some cases be approved by memberships at clubs. He also said that at many courses, like with Ironwood’s three-year plan, changes are being made in phases. That means full water savings might not be measured at courses for another two to three years.

But Kessler added that the lag time only explains part of the low water reduction number now. Despite state mandates and public outcry about water reduction, Kessler said there still must be more education and greater acceptance of the water problem by courses throughout the state, including in the Coachella Valley. While the rest of the state must deal with the issue as a financial problem because of skyrocketing water rates, Coachella Valley courses must look at the issue as a conservation matter, Kessler added.

“Longtime golf courses have to change their practices. There is an ethic, especially among private clubs, to be forward thinking and be part of the leading edge of desert life,” Kessler said. “A lot of golf courses haven’t yet got on that train, and others who are on it haven’t always put their plans into action.”

For Fought, the work he is overseeing at Ironwood is not just about helping the golf course but helping the desert.

“I am a believer that we are stewards of our own domain and that we should be proactive,” Fought said. “I don’t care if we have tons of water here, we are still better by doing this. I do think in the desert southwest, more than any part of the country, we have to be good.”

Read the full article here.

By: Michael Cohn

Deloitte has been working with the United States Golf Association to help the USGA broaden the appeal of golf and understand what is drawing players to the game.

The partnership began as a consulting engagement in 2014. “They reached out to us as a typical consulting arrangement,” said Deloitte sports consulting lead Pete Giorgio. “The basic issue was the USGA is recognizing that the people who are playing golf are evolving. They are trying to understand how they could deepen their relationships with golfers, but also start to think about what needs to change at the USGA to evolve with those golfers. We came in and helped them understand what was happening and start to build a plan to think about innovating within the USGA and evolving to meet the changing demands, needs and experiences that golfers are looking for.”

The arrangement broadened into a partnership this past January. “The partnership includes continuing to help them with those sorts of things, as well as a few areas where Deloitte can help,” said Giorgio. “We’re also working with them around things like the championships, the tournaments during the summer, as well as some other initiatives around our Impact Day.”

As part of Deloitte’s annual Impact Day of community service and volunteerism, the firm is working with Girls Golf, a group affiliated with both the USGA and the Ladies Professional Golf Association, which helps girls and young women build leadership skills through golf.

Deloitte has also become a sponsor for the USGA. “We have a partnership with Deloitte that’s multifaceted,” said USGA senior managing director of business affairs Sarah Hirshland. “They are a corporate partner of ours and one of five partners whom I would define as marketing partners. They help us support initiatives in the organization and help us amplify our voice and tell our stories to a broader audience.”

The USGA retained Deloitte to examine the organization and how it relates to the network of state and regional golf associations, along with golf clubs and facilities around the country, and their members.

“The idea was for us to take a look at our value proposition in that ecosystem and make sure we’re maximizing it and that it is current and relevant to today,” said Hirshland. “We asked Deloitte to come in and help us take a look and bring their expertise in business and strategy, but also their process-driven mindset and experience and understanding from other industries, to enable us to take a bit of a fresh look.”

Deloitte did some ethnographic research for the USGA to see how golfers have been evolving as new technologies develop both on and off the course, while lifestyles adapt to fit in work with ever-shrinking leisure time.

“We went around the country and went on visits and basically sat with a bunch of people who were playing golf, to understand a bit more about how they think about golf today, how they approach golf, what role golf plays in their lives, and how they think about the USGA as a partner in that relationship,” said Giorgio. “The big thing that we found is that golf continues to be something that is a huge part of a number of people’s lives. It’s a big part of who they are and the stories they tell about themselves, but people have increasing time pressures. Certainly there’s increasing economic pressures. People have more responsibilities. The big thing that we heard from folks was how do I figure out how to fit golf into my life and how can the USGA help me with that.”

Deloitte worked with the USGA on how it could put golfers at the center of what the organization does and work more effectively with other golfing organizations.

“How do we make it easier for people to find partners, to get better, to just enjoy the game and get to know the game?” said Giorgio. “What we find is there’s a bit of a barrier. If you’ve never played golf before, just summoning the courage to hit that first golf ball is a huge step, and then once you’ve hit a few golf balls, summoning the courage to step on a course. How can the USGA both directly and indirectly support people who want to get more involved?”

Deloitte helped the USGA understand the patterns of its different customer bases and what they needed. “Some of the field research they did for us was focused on how we identify stages within the golfer landscape and their environment,” said Hirshland. “They really helped us break down categories of consumers and think about the needs of those consumers in different stages of their golf game. For many of us, we’re either new and emerging and just trying it; or we’re engaged but maybe not at a high level or an elite level; and then there is certainly a group of golfers who are highly competitive, not just at the professional level but at the amateur level as well.” Deloitte helped the USGA understand and categorize those different bases and their different needs.

The USGA also needed to continue to play its traditional role around governing the game, setting the rules, and testing equipment while evolving the rules to support the way golfers play today. Sustainability has also taken on greater importance as parts of the country cope with drought.

“We talked about making it more sustainable lifestyle wise, and how do they make it sustainable economically for golf courses to continue to play the game,” said Giorgio. “Things like water and maintenance on golf courses are becoming more expensive. Some of the places like the Southwest, where water has become such a scarce resource, how do they decrease the need for water and decrease the need for fertilizer? They’ve got a bunch of great programs around turf grass research, as well as some interesting technology around tracking the way people walk around courses and move on courses. They can show courses where they need to water and more importantly where they don’t need to water.”

The USGA is evolving to deal with priorities both new and old. “We are in what will be a multiyear evolution of the way in which we work with our partners at the state and regional level, and the value proposition that we provide both to the individual golfer and to the golf facility,” said Hirshland. “That will be a long run, in terms of an evolving phased process and approach.”

Some of the evolution involves the technology behind the USGA Handicap System and the USGA Course Rating System.

“At the very core of much of it is both the rules of handicapping and the Course Rating System,” said Hirshland. “The rules that operate around that are something that the USGA created more than 100 years ago and really fit into our intellectual property, but the administration of that and the actual technology computation of handicaps is a sort of code of behaviors and processes, coupled with an algorithm and math and a lot of research that essentially is an enabler of allowing golfers of all skill levels to play and compete on an equitable basis. There are multiple components of that, some of which are very much end user driven, and some of which are very strategic and quite frankly math and scientifically driven. We are looking at those systems and processes and making sure that we are thoughtful about an institution that has existed for more than 100 years. It’s really unique to the game of golf, but the end user experience and how it applies to golf today is modern and current and appropriate for what is a very different society today than what existed even 10 or 15 years ago.”

Golf will be an Olympic event this summer for the first time and is expected to broaden the appeal of the game around the world. The USGA is actively involved with other U.S. and global organizations in bringing golf to the Rio games.

Read full story here.

Mike Huck, right, with Ted Horton, CGCS, at the Golf Industry Show. Photo courtesy of Emmy Moore Minister

Apr 15 2016 | John Reitman

In times of crisis, it can be comforting to have a voice of reason. Someone who delivers the truth. Someone who tells you what you need to hear, not always what you want to hear. For many in the golf business who are struggling to cope with issues associated with water shortages in California, Mike Huck has been such a voice.

A former superintendent and USGA Green Section agronomist, Huck has been an independent irrigation consultant and de facto water guru for the past 15 years. He consults on everything from the design and installation of the most water-efficient irrigation systems, through his company Irrigation & Turfgrass Services, to helping superintendents understand myriad water-conservation regulations and restrictions passed down at the state and local levels, including what they mean and how to comply with them.

Whether it’s the California State Water Project that funnels water from rivers and snowpack in the North to millions of consumers in the South, Colorado River water diversion that siphons drinking water to SoCal or issues affecting recycled water in the Coachella Valley, Huck is the trusted go-to source of information for many.

His passion is what one might expect from a hydrologist or someone from the U.S. Geological Survey, not a former golf course superintendent.

Huck has indeed become for many, a voice of reason in, no pun intended, a sea of uncertainty.

“Mike is the most trusted voice of water issues in the state,” said Russ Myers, who recently returned to Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma after spending six years at The Los Angeles Country Club. “Mike is a former golf course superintendent, but he’s not a golf guy. He’s a water guy.

“With Mike, you felt you had a real voice, not a blind advocate or a paid lobbyist. He knows what the issues are, what is realistic and what is not.”

Water issues in California definitely are real.

It was more than a year ago – April 1, 2015 to be exact – when, after four years of drought, California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered the California Water Resources Control Board to implement cutbacks that would reduce water use statewide by 25 percent by June 2016. Implementing those restrictions became a complicated process that included giving the state’s 400 urban water suppliers carte blanche to decide who among their customers they would target and how much each would be required to save. Cutbacks statewide ranged from nothing to more than 50 percent.
Mike is the most trusted voice of water issues in the state. Mike is a former golf course superintendent, but he’s not a golf guy. He’s a water guy.”

Before final details surrounding the cutbacks were announced, Huck had predicted cutbacks would reach 40 percent or more for some golf courses. He was right.

“The state is trying to deal with the fear factor surrounding water, and so they throw in broad-stroke regulations to try to solve it all,” Myers said.

“Mike already knows it all. From Los Angeles to San Francisco, he knows the issues, understands them and share it with everyone so that these regulations make sense to them.”

A native of Wisconsin, Huck, 59, has been in the golf business since the early 1970s when he worked at Maplecrest Country Club in Kenosha. He’s been a Californian since his days studying turf at Cal Poly Pomona, where he graduated in 1982. While at Cal Poly, he worked at Industry Hills Golf Club at Pacific Palms Resort, first on the crew, then as assistant and later superintendent until 1989. He then moved on to become superintendent at Mission Viejo Country Club and later the Southern California Golf Association Members Club.
Huck admits he struggled to deal with the private club-member mentality at Mission Viejo.

“I was getting burned out, and there was a guy coming on the board who didn’t like me, and he was coming to get me, so I left,” Huck said. “I thought it was better to leave on my own terms, but that hurt because I had put my heart into that property.

“Golf is a fun game, but it’s a funny business.”

He thought he’d find relief at the daily fee SCGA property, but he was wrong.

“I thought that opportunity would renew the fire in my belly, but it didn’t,” he said.

“I thought I was going to a daily fee operation, but it was more like the country club I’d just left, with all the grandiose ideas, but no money in place to do anything. They expected to reach the stars, but could only get to the moon.”

It was in 1985 that he applied for a vacancy in the USGA Green Section as a regional agronomist. That turned out to be a short-lived career thanks to a benign tumor that four years later resulted in a 90 percent loss of hearing in his right ear and contributed to problems with his equilibrium that made frequent travel for Green Section work nearly impossible.

“When I turned my head, it was like things were still moving, almost like vertigo,” he said. “I went back out on the road, and a year-and-a-half later it still was not getting better. I couldn’t walk a straight line. It became a quality-of-life issue. I couldn’t keep up that travel schedule like that.”

Although the tumor was benign, that did little at the time to alleviate Huck’s fears as he faced surgery to remove the growth.

“Trust me, that even with these assurances there were plenty of sleepless nights doing research online to understand what I was facing,” he said. “In reality, doing research online is probably the worst thing I could’ve done. You only read the horror stories online. You don’t read about the successes when it comes to the outcomes of these surgeries. I read plenty about people who could never get back to work and had trouble walking, etc., because of the effect on their balance and stamina from botched surgeries.”

As it turned out, the USGA’s loss was California golf industry’s gain.
I thought I was going to a daily fee operation, but it was more like the country club I’d just left, with all the grandiose ideas, but no money in place to do anything. They expected to reach the stars, but could only get to the moon.”

After a brief attempt at a career in irrigation sales, Huck’s life changed forever when Mark Mahady, a turf researcher and consultant near Monterey, enlisted his help on a water-allocation project in Las Vegas. Because other players in the project were juggling other projects, Huck ended up doing a large chunk of the work to keep the Vegas job on schedule. He enjoyed the work so much, he became a certified irrigation auditor and a new career was born. He has since stayed busy writing irrigation audits, consulting on recycled water programs and helping superintendents statewide squeeze every drop from their irrigation sources.

“Mike, by virtue of his background, became an expert in irrigation and water quality,” said USGA Green Section West Region director Pat Gross, who, like Huck, lives in California’s Orange County. “What sets Mike apart is his unselfishness in sharing this information. He reads all the articles, attends all the meetings because he sees how important this is to the industry.”

He was among the group that founded the California Alliance for Golf, a nonprofit advocacy organization that represents the interests of the state’s golf industry. He also helped found its predecessor organization.

Long before drought was a four-letter word in California, Huck was promoting water conservation and pushing the importance of regular irrigation audits. Ted Horton, CGCS, who spent more than 40 years as a superintendent at places like Pebble Beach Golf Links, said he believes it was Huck’s time with the Green Section that helped form his views on smart use of irrigation water.

“Mike was an early proponent of irrigation audits and never failed to urge those he came in contact with to improve system maintenance, scheduling, moisture sensing and the like,” Horton said.

“I would be willing to speculate that his visits to multiple properties convinced him that (most superintendents) would benefit from better irrigation equipment and better irrigation practices. This knowledge happens to be a strong suit for Mike, and he saw an opportunity to share earn from consulting in that part of the management of golf courses.”

Like the water on which he is fixated, work as an independent consultant has its ebbs and flows.

“It comes in waves,” he said. “I’m either in over my head, or twiddling my thumbs.”

Whether it is when his work flow is at high tide or low, Huck’s endeavors have taken on added significance since the drought, now in its fifth year, began.

Although irrigation work is how Huck earns a living, he shares a lot of his knowledge of California’s big picture water challenges as a sort of value-added commodity because he knows it is important for people to be informed.

He posts reams of information on water issues in California to social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. He also provides input to state agencies in Sacramento and to local water districts about the lengths to which superintendents are reaching to use water wisely. Likewise, he provides information to those in the golf business about state and local regulations and rationing policies, how to conform to them and how to make every drop count on the golf course.

“Mike contributed significantly to the effort of informing the regulatory water agencies, counties, cities and state about turfgrass irrigation and helped the industry to obtain reasonable drought-emergency practices,” Horton said.

“To keep abreast of the rapidly expanding knowledge, Mike pursued the information relentlessly. But most importantly, he shared most of what he learned with a large number of fellow turf management people and continues to filter reams of information, ultimately passing on the same to us.”

It’s just what one would expect from a water guy.

Read the full article and learn about Turfnet here!

You are invited to attend the CAG General Assembly meeting on
Thursday, April 28!

Del Paso Country Club
3333 Marconi Avenue
Sacramento, CA  95821

 1:00-3:00 PM

This afternoon session is open to interested parties in and/or associated with the California golf industry which includes: golf course superintendents, golf professionals, course owners, architects, supplier, vendors, governmental and water agency representatives, as well as members of the golfing public.

The  agenda will include the following: