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Presented in partnership with BASF
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Green Day on Champions Tour
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The Concord, Mass.-based layout, 22-year host of the Bank of America Championship on the Champions Tour, approached the city of Concord in May 2006 with a proposal to upgrade the current storage with a brand new, state-of-the-art environmental management center.
Because that wooden building served as storage for chemicals, fertilizers and plant protectants, Nashawtuc and its director of golf course operations, Paul Miller, CGCS, were left open to major liabilities, particularly due to its proximity to a nearby stream.
“If there was ever a fire or any kind of issue, I was in big trouble, because the product would have ended up down there,” Miller says. “These products are challenging to the environment if they get in the wrong situation, and we have to be responsible in how we store it and how we handle it. So that was really what prompted the whole building.”
That Nashawtuc sits between two rivers, the Sudbury and the Concord, and is 40 to 50 percent wetlands, added another environmental element to the project, which also helped the course’s concurrent efforts to obtain status as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary.
“The club wanted it because of the sensitivity and the uniqueness of this property,” says Miller, a 30-year member of GCSAA. “It’s sensitive. It floods. This golf course probably couldn’t be built (today) because it’s so low. So you have to make sure of how you’re going to put product down.”
The need for the new building became even more apparent last year, when flash floods inundated one-third of the course with up to 20 inches of water and caused the cancellation of the Bank of America event.
“We tried desperately to figure out how to protect the integrity of the event and the golf course,” Miller says. “But there was just no way it could be done.”
Ground on the new facility broke in February, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony took place June 21, a day before the 2007 Bank of America Championship kicked off, in an event titled Green Day for its gathering of environmental interests.
Green Day attendees received a tour of the environmental management center from its designer, Roger Mulloy of Ancon Inc. The 123-foot-by-33-foot, 12-foot-high facility will serve as storage for equipment, fertilizers, plant protectants and other chemicals, and also includes an equipment washing station with an ESD self-contained, closed-loop wash station. Built with pitched floors and contained sumps, the building eliminates the possibility of leakage or spills into any water sources.
Nearly all those who took part in the building and Audubon certification showed up for the event, including Steve Webster of building contractor Dutton & Garfield and Nashawtuc second assistant superintendent John McShane, who spearheaded the process to obtain Audubon certification. Several of Nashawtuc’s suppliers of environmentally friendly products were also represented, including Brian Melka, director of product management for Jacobsen, which demonstrated its electric greensmowers; John Bresnahan of BASF; Gordon Kauffman, Ph.D., of Grigg Bros.; and Mary Moffett of S.V. Moffett Co. Inc.
Miller gave a lot of credit to those who helped the process, but also acknowledged how his unique accomplishment sets an example for the golf course industry.
“A lot of times we try to convince people we’re not applying chemicals, and I can’t say that without laughing,” Miller says. “We apply chemicals, but we have responsibilities and frameworks that we do it in. And that’s the message we’ve got to send. This (facility) speaks volumes in that.”
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation recently gave its Integrated Pest Management Innovator Award to Lahontan Golf Club in Truckee and Kevin Breen, CGCS, superintendent at the private 18-hole course. The award recognizes groups that create an enduring partnership with nature to contribute to a sustainable environment and economy, a DPR spokesperson said. Lahontan is the second golf course to receive the award since its inception in 1994 (the first was Pebble Beach Co. in 1999). Breen is working this year with The Environmental Institute for Golf to develop case studies in water-quality monitoring, standard operation procedures for pesticide selection, and snow mold trials.
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