By: Jim Schmid, Special to The Desert Sun

El Niño’s rains are falling.  The Sierra snowpack is well above average.  The reservoirs are refilling in advance of the spring snow melt.  The state’s urban water users have reduced their 2013 usage by 26.3 percent. This confluence of events has persuaded the State Water Resources Control Board to relax current conservation mandates by as much as 8 percent in some regions and consider further relaxations in 2016 to the extent to which the rain and snow continue to fall.

At the same time the Coachella Valley Golf and Water Task Force is adding members and redoubling its efforts to reduce the desert golf industry’s water footprint by a factor of 17 percent.  I know; I’m one of the new members who joined other valley golf course superintendents, general managers, club members, management/ownership representatives and association leaders on the Task Force at the beginning of 2016.

You may be wondering why we would all join a conservation effort at precisely the moment we’re starting to see relief from the drought.  The answer is as simple as it is often overlooked.  The collaborative effort between the valley golf industry and the Coachella Valley Water District was convened not in response to any temporal drought, but in response to the goals of the Coachella Valley Water Management Plan – goals that are unique to this region and related almost exclusively to the integrity of the giant aquifer that sits beneath us.  Precisely because the golf industry is so large and impactful here in the valley – its 122 golf courses represent 14 percent of California’s golf stock, generate $1.1 billion in economic activity, and employ more than 14,000 workers – there is no way for the region’s water agencies to restore the aquifer to a state of equilibrium without an “impactful” contribution from the industry that defines much of life in the desert.

The founding members of the task force haven’t gone anywhere.  They established a scientifically grounded budget allocation model, created the region’s first turf rebate program, stimulated new desert-centric conservation programs, assisted in converting many more golf properties to non-potable sources, conducted myriad educational conferences designed to raise awareness and, in the process, laid a foundation upon which an expanded group of golf courses, disciplines and industry representatives can now ramp up efforts to bring the valley golf industry into full alignment with the Coachella Valley Water Management Plan.

Will it be easy?  No; important matters rarely are.  Am I glad I joined the task force’s ranks?  Absolutely; there is no “task” more important to the long-term sustainability of the industry that employs me and so many thousands of my fellow residents in this valley.  Will we get there overnight?  No, but that’s the beauty of this collaborative effort.

By starting down this road so early, the golf industry and CVWD have given themselves the luxury of the time necessary to get it right – right for the industry, right for the water district, right for the aquifer, and right for the community.

Jim Schmid is golf superintendent at The Lakes Country Club in Palm Desert and is a member of the Coachella Valley Golf and Water Task Force and the board of directors of the Hi-Lo Desert chapter Golf Course Superintendents Association. Email him at jschmid@thelakescc.com.

By: Craig Kessler

Chief NASA JPL climatologist Bill Patzert told the Los Angeles Times that the first week of 2016 amounted to a “textbook” El Niño system.  A rapid succession of storms lined up across the Pacific Ocean and pelted California at a faster clip than during the previous El Niño periods in 1982-83 and 1997-98, the implication being that all those predictions about a strong El Niño are coming to fruition.

At least for now.  When the subject is the weather, the only thing we can ever know for sure is what happened, not what will happen.  But so far, so good; indeed, so far, it couldn’t be better.

It may seem odd to rejoice in golf courses closed due to inclement weather, floods, and debris swelling flood control basins making beaches unsafe.  But after four years of a crushing drought in which California saw its driest year on record, hottest year on record, hottest combined hot/dry year on record, and the lowest Sierra snowpack recorded in 500 years – well, suffice it to say the closures, floods and debris swelled waterways are a small price to pay for some relief.

And that’s pretty much all that even a “textbook” El Niño will bring – relief.  It won’t end the drought.  It will take more than one great precipitation year to do that, and many climatologists are already warning that El Niño’s are often followed immediately by La Nina’s, a situation in which the eastern Pacific waters cool down and lead to a dry pattern over the American Southwest.

The first bit of “relief” promises to come later this month when the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) promulgates some relaxations in the current gubernatorial emergency drought order.  As everyone reading this surely knows, for the first time in the state’s history we are under a set of mandatory water restrictions aimed at accomplishing a 25% overall reduction in urban water consumption by February 28 (25% less than 2013 usage).  As of December 31, that number is tracking at 26.3%.  And due in part to that and due in part to the tolling of El Niño, the SWRCB is set to reduce that number to 22% and in addition reduce by a factor of 4% for those areas that have disproportionately invested in alternate sources of water (desalination in San Diego County and potable reuse in Orange County) and those areas where evapotranspiration rates are onerous due to extreme heat (deserts and inland valleys).

To the extent that El Niño continues along its “textbook” path SWRCB is prepared to issue further relaxations, although it is not at this time going to consider revoking the emergency order, which is going to be extended another 270 days as part of the envisaged “relaxation” measure.  The golf industry would hope that SWRCB might incorporate the Coachella Valley’s huge seasonal population shift into the mix of factors to consider when assigning tiers; when all those snowbirds are at their permanent homes in the “off season,” their outdoor landscapes require water even if their indoor areas don’t.  And that’s not an unreasonable hope.  With each iteration of these emergency regulations, the SWRCB incorporates more equity and nuance.

SWRCB was assigned a task for which it had neither adequate resources nor institutional memory, and it did not have the luxury of time.  Facing a possible 5^th year of drought, California simply had to reduce its water consumption or face potentially crippling shortage in 2016-2017.  Hard cases make bad law, but they have to be resolved.  Crises make for bad public policy, but they have to be addressed.  SWRCB deserves credit for adequately addressing this crisis, but that in no way obviates the need to use the time afforded us by El Niño’s appearance to craft better public policies for managing future droughts and drought emergencies.  And from what the climatologists tell us, our burgeoning population practically guarantees that we are going to face future droughts and drought emergencies.

Buried in the Governor’s April 1, 2015 Executive Order that created the mandatory 25% conservation protocol was an order to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and SWRCB to begin reforming certain regulations and laws based on some of the lessons of the current drought.  DWR has already revamped the Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (MWELO), and the California Alliance for Golf (CAG) very effectively participated in that truncated process; the formulae upon which golf course water budgets are assigned in virtually every “alternative means of compliance” protocol are enshrined therein, and any changes thereto would have resulted in budget allocations considerably smaller than they are presently.

In 2016 DWR will revamp additional regulations and ordinances with the potential to affect the golf industry, and CAG has been invited to the table where these initial deliberations will take place.  As SWRCB gets down to its own assigned regulatory/legislative workload, the golf industry is working to duplicate that same level of engagement.

El Niño may be closing the book on the great 2012-2015 drought, but it isn’t going to close the book on a rapid succession of new laws, regulations, and protocols regarding water allocation and use; indeed, the book is just opening regarding the regulation of groundwater.  The next few years will see the adoption of groundwater sustainability plans for all of the state’s un-adjudicated groundwater basins, and the golf industry has as much at stake in that process as it does in all of the DWR and SWRCB coming processes.

What now?  A new normal where business as usual promises to be more business with regulatory agencies and legislative bodies than at any time in the industry’s past.

By: Larry Bohannan

Imagine a day when more than 90 golf courses in the Coachella Valley will be on non-potable water, either canal water from the Colorado River or recycled water. Imagine none of those golf courses using water from the desert’s aquifer, leaving that water strictly for domestic use.

That possibility is not a dream, according to John Powell, board president of the Coachella Valley Water District. It is, in fact, a long-term goal, Powell said Monday at the Coachella Valley Golf Industry Summit at PGA West. The summit, conducted by the CareerBuilder Challenge and other golf-related organizations, was held at PGA West on the first day of the PGA Tour event.

“Currently, there are 53 golf courses using what we call non-potable water, and that’s either water that is imported Colorado River water or recycled, reclaimed waste water, or a combination of both,” Powell told the full house of about 250 attendees. “With the 53 courses currently using that water, including the ones here, we are looking to add another 43. So that would get us up to 96 golf courses in the valley over the next several years on either import or recycled water or a combination of both.”

Powell spoke during one of three panel discussions at the summit. And while the panels on the economic impact of golf in the desert and what is right with golf these days held messages that need to be heard, it was the panel on water use and management that was perhaps the most newsworthy and pressing in a state hoping that El Niño will end a three-year drought.

Golf courses across the state, and perhaps in particular in the golf-rich Coachella Valley, have been the focus of criticism during the drought as water became an issue throughout the state. Part of the purpose of the summit and the water panel Monday was to try to get the word out that golf courses in the desert are trying to do their part.

Powell said 18 golf courses in the CVWD district have undergone turf removal in the last year or so. And, as Stu Rowland of Rancho La Quinta Country Club pointed out, that was without the large financial incentives that were available to courses in areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas. Desert courses, Rowland said, had to share the cost of turf removal.

Pat Gross, west region director of the United States Golf Association green section, reinforced that the USGA believes water is a more direct threat to golf than the overall economic state of the country. But he added that while programs like turf removal save water, just how much water is being saved and at what cost can’t truly be determined yet.

Could a wet winter, and El Niño winter with the promise of drought relief ease the demands on desert golf courses for conservation? Powell said that’s not likely.

“What fits us is our water management plan. And we are really measuring our success against that,” Powell said. “Are we sustainable in this valley? We have unique characteristics that nobody else in the state of California has.”

So just because snow is continuing to fall in Northern California, that doesn’t mean that desert golf courses are going to re-plant grass or double their watering times. In fact, it’s more likely that even as the snow falls, golf courses in the desert will continue to search for ways to cut down on their water use and to change the kind of water they use rather than moving back to what they were doing five or 10 years ago. That’s likely the new reality of the drought.

By: Sam Richards

SUNOL — The Sunol Valley Golf Club, opened in 1968 surrounded by the flower nurseries and gravel-mining operations of the Alameda Creek area, will likely close in early January, with the final golf rounds set for Dec. 31.

General Manager Bryan Richardson said the issue, as with many golf courses in the East Bay and nationally, is mostly economic.

“The golf market in this area is saturated,” he said. “There’s been a severe softening of the market, and it’s the economy and other things.”

Fewer than 68,000 individual rounds have been played at Sunol Valley so far in 2015, he said, down from the course’s high of more than 130,000 a year in the late 1990s.

Another factor, he said, is the state’s drought-caused water shortage, which has meant a 500-percent increase in water costs over the past four years. “It just isn’t feasible to continue to operate a 36-hole golf course under the current circumstances.”

The last day of play on one of the two courses, the Palm course, will be Dec. 20; the other course’s last day of play on the adjacent Cypress course will be Dec. 31. The pro shop will be open Jan. 2 and 3.

The golf course is about halfway through a 25-year lease with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Richardson said. The SFPUC owns the golf course land and much of the surrounding area near Sunol, having bought much of the area in the 1930s for its water resources.

Almost three years ago, the Ivaldi family, the course’s only operator over 47 years, had worked with Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty’s office for the county to acquire the golf course land from San Francisco. If acquired, the plan was to do a “highest and best use” study for the land, said Shawn Wilson, Haggerty chief of staff.

Measure D, approved by voters in 2000, resulted in urban growth boundaries around cities and unincorporated communities in central and eastern Alameda County where urban development can’t happen without voter approval.

“The intent was to ensure that land remain open space, and a golf course,” said Wilson, adding that talks with the SFPUC are continuing. “I don’t think the SFPUC, if they take the land back from the (golf course) operators, have any good plan other than to close the course down.”

The SFPUC did not return a call Friday for comment.

Sunol Valley’s central location made it a popular destination for groups. On Friday, three groups on the greens consisted of friends from various areas.

“Now we’re going to see who’s better at persuading the rest of us to go farther south or farther north to play,” joked Francis Ho of Alameda, joining friends from Castro Valley and Fremont.

Having met there almost every Friday for the past three years, they said they were sad about the closure. “This is a real loss,” Ho said.

Bonnie Garnar of Castro Valley and Karen Carlson of San Jose have taken a similar meet-in-the middle approach eight to 10 times a year for the past 25 years.

“I’m bummed, really,” said Garnar, adding she loves the course and has cherished the after-golf burgers at the clubhouse.

Added Carlson, “Bonnie and I will have to find a new place to meet.”

Other area golf courses have closed in recent months, including the Pine Meadow course in Martinez and the Springtown course in Livermore. Others have been for sale.

The closures follow a national trend. Following a boom in the 1990s and early 2000s, the ranks of American golfers in general have declined, from 30 million in 2005 to 25.3 million in 2012, according to the National Golf Foundation.

On Thursday, Richardson gathered Sunol Valley’s 80 employees to tell them of the closure. He says he is grateful to Haggerty’s office for working to keep the course open in some form, but he’s convinced the end is near now — 32 years after he started at the golf course as part of a high school work study program.

“We want people to come down and get their last rounds, redeem their gift certificates and say goodbye,” he said.

Find the full article here.

Dec 17, 2015

One wouldn’t normally talk of golf and water preservation in the same breath. But containing water costs is becoming the very factor that will keep golf courses in the green. The United States Golf Association (USGA) is using GPS technology and targeted horticulture to help golf courses cut water consumption and related costs, as they seek to reverse their flagging fortunes. It is also working on attracting more players.

“The industry conversation has been dominated by a single topic, which is, ‘how do we get more golfers into the game?’” said Rand Jerris, senior managing director for public services at the USGA. If the industry has to support a growth in players from 25 million to 30 million or 40 million, it must develop a “sustainable ecosystem,” he added.

Jerris spoke on the USGA’s efforts to boost the financial well-being of golf courses on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111. (Listen to the podcast here.)

The USGA has been using technology to help golf courses address one of their biggest challenges: water consumption costs. Jerris noted that water costs are rising 11% a year on average nationally, with the average golf course spending $600,000 a year on water and other maintenance. In drought-ridden California, some courses are spending more than $2 million a year on water alone. That squeezes the finances of the golf course.

One way to cut water costs is to determine if courses are maintaining and irrigating more acreage than needed. “The water issue will present the biggest challenge for golf in terms of sustainability,” he said. Indeed, in one program, the USGA puts GPS devices in the golfers’ pockets to track their play and discover which parts of courses are seldom, or even never, used. Limiting the maintenance and irrigation of the little-used portions of the golf course would save money. Twitter  “This is actual, factual data,” Jerris said. Without such data, courses would be maintaining all the greens at considerable cost.

Since 1983, the USGA has partnered with universities and invested some $50 million in research to develop commercially viable strains of turf grass that require less water, grow at slower rates or are less susceptible to diseases and pests, said Jerris. One strain is resistant to salt water. If it proves to be viable, golf courses could save a ton of money by using recycled water that tends to have higher salinity, he explained. The USGA is also banking on research into some types of buffalo grass that need to be mowed only twice a year, and survive being irrigated twice yearly as well.

The USGA is also banking on research into some types of buffalo grass that need to be mowed only twice a year, and survive being irrigated twice yearly as well.

There have been some gains over the past decade. U.S. golf courses have cut water consumption by 22%, Jerris said, citing data from a study by the USGA and the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. Estimated savings from water bills stand at $150 million, he said, with similar declines seen in labor and chemicals costs. The USGA’s goal is to help golf courses further cut costs by 1% annually over the next decade — or 10% by 2025 — to save another $1.5 billion, he added.

Those will be much-needed savings. Since the 2008 recession, declines in disposable incomes have reduced the number of rounds played and green fees on golf courses, said Jerris. In turn, lower earnings have forced many golf courses to postpone capital improvement projects. But with a 3% uptick seen this year, he is hopeful that the slump has bottomed out.

Find the podcast and full article here.

By:  Larry Bohannan, The Desert Sun

November 16, 2015

As golf has struggled in recent years to find new golfers and retain existing players, there have been other questions for golf course operators such as: What can we do with all of this land if it’s not being used on a regular basis?

Last weekend in the desert, at least two courses showed there are uses for courses that not only produce some revenue but also bring people to their courses and perhaps expose them to the course or the game of golf itself.

Last Friday and Saturday, the Westin Mission Hills Resort in Rancho Mirage hosted Golf Fest on its Gary Player course. Golf Fest is not specifically a Coachella Valley event since the company that puts on the shows also sets up similar shows through the Southwest. The show combined golf club manufacturers showing off their latest equipment and letting attendees hit those clubs on the driving range with some non-golf specific vendors having their product displayed.

The Golf Fest saw the parking lot of the Player course overflowing, with cars spilling into the neighboring desert. That’s a tremendous thing for the folks at the course, not only because people were spending money at Golf Fest and perhaps in the club’s pro show, but also because people who took the time to go to the course might have a better idea of what the Players course is all about.

On Saturday, the second day of the Golf Fest, the city of Indio hosted a non-golf event on the driving range and practice facilities of it municipal course, The Lights. The California BBQ Championship saw dozens of food vendors selling ribs and chicken and pulled pork and other food to anyone who wanted to show up. There was also a competition among the pit masters.

The event was a huge hit, with one official saying a crowd expected to be about 2,200-2,500 had swelled to about 6,000. Hungry people who reached the course after 3 p.m. found several vendors sold out.

What was interesting was seeing one group of four younger people, perhaps about 20 years old or so, looking over at the 18-hole par-3 course as they were slowly walking to the exit. Is this where their friend tells them he comes to play this game, this golf? It looks nice, one of the women said. She might have to ask her friend what this is all about.

OK, that’s probably not the strong commitment for being a lifelong golfer. But perhaps it is a start. Or perhaps it is just a way for people who have no use for the game to have a bit more understanding of those who do love the game and its venues.

It’s likely that the United States Golf Association doesn’t consider barbecue competitions or golf shows as a way to grow the game, and the USGA may be right about that. But the people who are running golf courses want to sell golf but also have revenue streams. For years, car shows have been held on golf courses across the country, bringing people to the facilities. One of the earliest golf courses in the desert, the nine holes at the Desert Inn in Palm Springs, was annually the site of a big dog show for the village.

So a golf merchandise show and a barbecue competition would seem to fit right in. As much as we like to think golf courses are about golf, they are really about making some money. And it’s OK to look outside of rounds of golf for that revenue.

Find the full article here.

Thursday, October 22

12:00 – 3:00 PM

Southern California PGA Section

3333 Concours St., Bldg. 2, Suite 2100

Ontario CA  91764

Lunch at noon — Meeting  1-3 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.

Please RSVP your attendance to: csthomas@pgahq.com.

The meeting agenda will include the following:

• Sacramento Update and Legislative Update
• Water Update /Regulatory Update
• Status of Statewide Advocacy Coalition/Future Trajectory
• Member and Association Updates
• Growth of the Game

The regions’ 122 golf courses generate an estimated $745.6 million in golf-related spending and directly employ over 8,000 workers

The Hi-Lo Desert Golf Course Superintendents Association, with financial support from the California Alliance for Golf, California Golf Course Owners Association, Golden State Chapter of CMAA, Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, Southern California Golf Association and the Southern California Section of the PGA, has commissioned and released the first Coachella Valley specific golf economic impact report.

The study, formally titled “Economic Impact of the Coachella Valley Golf Industry,” was conducted by Tourism Economics, an Oxfords Economics Company with extensive experience in performing regional economic analyses.  The firm utilized golf-stays by locals and visitors at facilities within the region and their associated expenditures to construct a model of the industry’s impact on the regional economy.  Home to 122 facilities, the Coachella Valley represents roughly 13.9 percent of California’s golf industry.

The study confirms what many suspected; the industry is central to the economic viability of the greater Palm Desert region.  Golf generates nearly $1.1 billion in overall economic activity, thousands of jobs and roughly $83.3 million in state and local taxes. The scope and size is remarkable for a region home to so few persons.

The golf industry’s direct employment amounts to 7.3% of total employment in the Coachella Valley, or about half the share of leisure and hospitality (15.0%) and nearly double that of financial activities (4.0%). Total business sales generated directly by golf account for 11.4% of all taxable sales in the Coachella Valley, while direct golf-related retail sales represent 3.0% of taxable retail sales in the region. Further, state and local tax revenues generated by golf in the Coachella Valley make up about 9.7% of the total state and local tax impact of travel in California’s Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, as reported by Dean Runyan Associates.

“The results of the study substantiate golf’s contributions to the economic vitality of the Coachella Valley,” said Anthony Antonik, economist with Tourism Economics. “For every dollar spent on-site at a golf facility, another $0.55 is spent in other parts of the local economy by golf-related visitors. Golf has a significant impact on the financial well-being of the area.”

The report can be accessed by clicking the following link: TE Oxford – EconomicImpactoftheCoachellaValleyGolfIndustry Revised 7 27 (Final)

By: Craig Kessler

California is home to 866 golf courses.  Together they consume less than 1% of the potable water consumed in the state, a percentage that goes steadily down with each passing year.  If they were to all disappear tomorrow Californians would not notice an appreciable difference in their water supply, but they would notice the loss of a $13.2 billion industry that directly employs 130,000 persons.  And the state’s large municipalities would notice the loss of hefty net revenue streams they employ to support their park systems.

While these may be inconvenient facts for those who would lay disproportionate blame on the golf industry for California’s water woes, it is not an excuse for inaction.  To paraphrase an iconic Midwestern United States Senator, a percent here and a percent there, and pretty soon you’re talking real water.

And that’s the point.  There are a lot of industries that are dependent upon water to produce their products and keep us awash in employment, economic activity, and tax receipts.  Some are visible, such as farms, golf courses, cemeteries, sports stadia, and parks, and many are invisible, such as oil refineries, bottling plants, restaurants, and small manufacturers.  But most if not all began reducing their respective water footprints well before the current drought crisis, and most if not all have long standing plans to continue that trajectory after a little rain and snow brings us temporary relief.

For the California golf industry those long standing plans have meant conversion to recycled water, large investments in sophisticated weather based computer controlled irrigation systems, removal of turf, elimination of water intensive practices such as over seeding, replacement of cool season grasses with warm season varieties, use of wetting agents and soil moisture monitors, employment of drought tolerant native species, and the development of drought contingency plans that provide clear prescriptions for how to ramp up water reductions during drought emergencies.

Because of all of the above, the golf industry is poised to accelerate what is already in place and play its role in accomplishing the Governor’s call for 25% savings by February 2016.  No doubt, many other “one-percenters” are similarly poised, as are larger users such as agriculture and manufacturing.

The last three years have brought us the driest year on record, the hottest year on record, and the lowest Sierra snowpack on record.  If next year brings us another such superlative acknowledgement, today’s emergency will become tomorrow’s crisis.  We can respond by sacrificing scapegoats.  We can respond by engaging in ponderous comparisons between the amounts of water it takes to produce a walnut and put a steak on the table.  We can respond by lamenting our lack of prescience in failing to add storage capacity, develop recapture infrastructure, or construct greater recycling capacity.  We can even respond by seeking to exempt ourselves by dint of the paltry percentage of potable water our industry uses.

Or we can respond by pulling together instead of pulling apart.  Just as hard cases make bad law, crises produce measures that are imperfect.  We can perfect them when we have the luxury of the time necessary to do so.  Right now we need to cease the scapegoating, finger pointing and nitpicking – and get about working together to ensure that we position ourselves to deal with a 5^th year of drought should that bad fortune come to pass.

Article by Craig Kessler, which was featured in the Summer 2015 FORE Issue.