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Go green, or else
Government-mandated environmental stewardship efforts are becoming more common, and golf courses are among the first to fall under their rule.
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| Wyndance GC in Goodwood, Ontario, Canada. Photos courtesy of ClubLink |
As a general rule of thumb, it’s pretty safe to say that, over time, environmental regulations tend to increase in number, not decrease; and that environmental standards tend to become more stringent, not more lax.
The golf course industry, as with almost any industry, is subject to those two trends. But now superintendents can add one more trend to that list: throughout North America, local governments are increasingly requiring golf courses to earn an environmental certification. More often than not, the required certification is that of Audubon International — obtained via either the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses, or the Audubon Signature Program. From small towns to cities to whole counties, this trend has played itself out in more than 20 communities throughout the United States and Canada.
But is this a good thing? It’d be hard to argue against more environmentally responsible golf courses. But what happens when a previously voluntary environmental certification program, like Audubon’s, becomes mandatory? What happens when a local government preferentially chooses one certification program over others? And most simply, how has this trend played itself out in communities and on golf courses across North America?
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| Township requirements to earn Audubon certification didn’t faze Wyndance GC. It was already required to participate in Audubon’s programs through its affiliation with Canadian management company ClubLink. |
Protecting the land
We can look to Uxbridge Township, in Ontario, Canada, for the most recent example. Located some 40 miles northeast of Toronto, the community of nearly 20,000 people shares an agricultural and Quaker heritage. As with many communities, recent years have seen a growth in the number of new subdivisions, but the community retains its historic and vibrant downtown core. Above all else, residents are proud of their land, with its rolling countryside and an extensive network of trails that link the Durham Forest and the Oak Ridges Moraine, two important local natural features. Six golf courses, plus a seventh due to finish construction at the end of this year, total more than 1,000 acres of land within the township.
With prime natural areas in their own backyards, the residents of Uxbridge — also a headwaters for the Lake Ontario watershed — took water quality seriously, seriously enough to form the Uxbridge Watershed Advisory Committee. Back in 2005, that committee looked at the local water issue and what the community could do to protect water quality. A number of golf courses were slated for development, and the members of the committee had concerns about the environmental impact of construction and the expansion of the local golf course industry.
They formed a golf course subcommittee, and eventually Jake Riekstins, the superintendent of Wyndance Golf Club and a 10-year member of GCSAA, became its chair. The subcommittee met regularly, compiling input from its members, the township’s council, residents and stakeholder groups (mostly local environmental nonprofits). The outcome of those meetings was the Township of Uxbridge Golf Course Policy, which was officially signed on June 1, 2006.
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| Wyndance superintendent Jake Riekstins had a leg up on environmental efforts at his club thanks to his involvement on the Uxbridge Watershed Advisory Council. |
And there, on line three of its five provisions, was the lynchpin: “Obtaining Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary designation by December 31, 2015 (or 10 years following the opening of a new golf course) and keeping such in good standing.” The subcommittee had considered other environmental certification programs, including ISO 14001, but ultimately settled on Audubon.
Regardless, it was an ultimatum of sorts; a statement to “go green, or else.” In this case, the local golf courses were happy to oblige. They believed that they were good environmental stewards and felt that the policy’s reporting requirements would help the community to see it, too. Golf course superintendents also felt it could help them to differentiate their industry from the local sand and gravel pits that had a less-than-stellar eco-reputation.
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| The course stores rainwater and snowmelt in a 22.5 million gallon on-site reservoir. Photos courtesy of Jake Riekstins |
“We, as golf courses, weren’t exactly viewed as the evil neighbor,” Riekstins says, “but the aggregate producers — the sand and gravel pits — and golf courses were lumped together, because we both use land. People didn’t understand how we operate, that we are stewards of the land.”
In fact, Riekstins’ Wyndance GC — a private club with an 18-hole championship course and a nine-hole academy — was built on the reclaimed remains of a former gravel pit. Wyndance is also a ClubLink course, and ClubLink had already committed to certifying all its courses in the Audubon program, so for Riekstins, abiding by the new golf course policy was only natural (pardon the pun).
Now, more than two years after the policy first went into effect, two golf courses are Audubon-certified, four are Audubon-registered, and the last course currently under construction will soon be coming on board as well.
“It will still take some time for the good will to permeate through the community,” Riekstins says, “but it’s happening.”
Overcoming opposition
In other communities, the good will hasn’t been quite as free flowing. Back in the mid-1990s, breast cancer rates among women on Long Island, N.Y., were among the highest in the state and the nation. By the late 1990s, people suspected contaminated groundwater as the cause and blamed pesticide use on golf courses for the contamination, although agriculture was later shown to be the culprit.
When The Bridge Golf Club, an exclusive, private club, made its initial application to the town of Southampton in 1994, it faced “militant opposition,” says Joe Raynor, the project’s manager. It turned out that groundwater wasn’t the community’s only concern. So was loss of open space, which remains the town’s number one environmental concern, according to Jeff Murphree with Southampton’s Department of Land Management. The Bridge GC was finally approved in 1999, but not before the town took an unusual step: it required the club to become certified through the Audubon Signature Program.
Raynor and Murphree disagree as to whether the town required The Bridge to certify through Audubon, or whether The Bridge voluntarily offered to do so to appease residents and mitigate concerns. The outcome, though, is unchanged. The golf course officially opened for play in 2001, and in 2005 earned certification as an Audubon Signature Sanctuary, fulfilling the requirements of the town. Today, the 512-acre site, managed by Stanley Gregg, CGCS, a 21-year GCSAA member, features a 281-acre golf course, 70 acres devoted to 20 single-family residential lots and 153 acres that were ceded to the town as permanently protected open space.
And while the town of Southampton didn’t have a golf course policy in the way that Uxbridge does — in theory making The Bridge a one-off example — the town has since required other new courses to follow the same protocol.
Following AI’s roadmap
So what does Audubon International think about local governments requiring its programs of golf courses? “It is a voluntary program, and I would like to see it remain that way,” says Nancy Richardson, the director of the Audubon Signature Program. “Instead, I would like to see some type of incentives from the planning agencies for (golf courses) that participate.”
Even so, Richardson understands that many local governments are dealing with unfamiliar territory.
“Many planning bodies across the country don’t fully understand what is involved in building or maintaining a golf course,” she explains. “They know there are environmental issues. But what are those issues? Who should deal with them? That sets them off looking for someone to help, and we naturally pop up.”
And pop up Audubon has — in ordinances, amendments to land development regulations, resolutions and conditions of approval for particular projects, like at The Bridge. In a sense, instead of outlining all the explicit environmental requirements a community might like to impose on golf courses, it’s simpler to say, “Do Audubon.”
Such examples span the continent, from Florida to Wyoming, from Hawaii to New York, and northward to Uxbridge. So what about the point that local governments are requiring golf courses to participate in the program of one particular, private organization? Are they even allowed to do that? For sure, Audubon’s programs remain the predominant green certification programs for the golf course industry. But they are hardly the only choice. There’s ISO 14001 (considered by Uxbridge), the Michigan Turfgrass Environmental Stewardship Program and the River-Friendly Golf Course Certification Program in New Jersey, to name three others.
End justifies the means?
Most governments have sidestepped the issue through careful wording that requires a golf course to participate in an Audubon program or to meet equivalent environmental standards. This leaves the door open for other possible paths to the same environmental end, though in practice, most golf courses find it infinitely simpler to just join an Audubon program, rather than explain how a competing program meets the same requirements.
Take, for example, Sarasota County, Fla. Of the more than 17,000 golf courses in the U.S. today, Florida has more than any other state — more than 1,300. Of those, more than 65 are located in Sarasota’s 620-square-mile area alone. Such a proliferation of golf courses weighed heavy on the minds of county commissioners.
“They were concerned about pesticide use, water use, habitat protection,” explains Jim Dierolf with the county’s department of resource protection. “We were putting numerous stipulations on golf courses to address those issues. If we were going to do this every time, why not just have an ordinance that would contain all those requirements?”
That’s exactly what Sarasota did. County officials looked around for examples of good golf course environmental programs, and found Raptor Bay Golf Club, in nearby Lee County. Raptor Bay — where Law Brod, CGCS and a 16-year GCSAA member, supervises maintenance — was the first resort golf course in the world certified by Audubon International as a Gold Signature Sanctuary, the highest level of Audubon compliance.
“We felt that Audubon International courses really epitomized the type of standards that were appropriate for golf courses,” says Dorothea Zysko, a former manager of resource protection for the county. That’s when the county decided to include Audubon in the mandate.
Sarasota County’s ordinance passed in 2003, but not without some disagreement. Some county commissioners wanted to include all golf courses, including existing ones, essentially requiring them to “green retrofit.” That approach was abandoned, and in the end, Sarasota’s ordinance only applied to new golf course developments. It stopped shy of explicitly requiring certification in the Audubon Signature Program, but did require that “golf courses be designed and managed according to the Audubon International program or a similar certification program.”
Since then, the ordinance has largely been a success, but it has also had some unintended consequences. When the Ritz Carlton in downtown Sarasota built a new golf course (one that opened to rave reviews from all the usual suspects), it located the golf course just across the border in neighboring Manatee County, where it wasn’t beholden to Sarasota’s stringent guidelines.
Getting proactive
Whatever you think of the “go green, or else” trend — to the positive or to the negative — we can look to Russell Township in Ohio, a 19-square-mile township with a population of 5,600 located east of Cleveland, for perhaps the best sign that it is a strong trend indeed. “We’ve been very interested in protecting our natural resources,” says Greg Studen, a township trustee and chair of the zoning commission.
Russell Township adopted a regulation in 1996 as part of a zoning resolution (subsequently amended and upheld in 2004), that lays out a comprehensive set of environmental guidelines borrowed from the standards of Audubon’s programs. In lieu of demonstrating adherence to all those guidelines, golf courses can simply get Audubon-certified and “fast track” through the township’s requirements.
There’s just one more thing: Russell Township had no golf courses at the time it enacted the regulation, and it still has none today. Consider it a proactive stance.
The golf course industry is no stranger to environmental regulation, and the industry has done much to raise its own environmental standard. But it appears that local governments are getting in on the game now as well. Superintendents, take notice. The wording may not be quite as succinct or clear or harsh, but more and more, communities are turning to their local golf courses and saying, “go green, or else.”