Golf Course Resort Water Quality
Golf Course Resort Water Quality
(OP)
I'm involved in stormwater design for a golf course resort with residential component in Oregon in an area with sensitive streams and regulatory wetlands. All stormwater discharges from impervious areas are to be treated and detained in the normal way and I have no problem with those areas. The problem is that the local DEQ is also assuming that soluble fertilizers and pesticides will be used on the grass fairways, therefor, we need to treat runoff from them also. I'm told by the course designers and maintenance people that they practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and use only organic (slow release, non soluble) fertilizers. They are instituting special storage and handling controls for chemicals, etc. so it seems overkill to construct end of pipe treatment systems when operational controls would be so much more effective IMO. (I.E. if everybody thinks that eop BMP's will catch any releases why bother being careful with chemicals.)
Has anybody had experience with water quality issues on golf courses? Is DEQ being unreasonable?
Has anybody had experience with water quality issues on golf courses? Is DEQ being unreasonable?





RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
http:/
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
good luck
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
Meadow Lakes is inlayed with 10 evaporation ponds, surface drainage collectors and irrigation pools designed to treat community wastewater before it finds its way into the local river.
http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id24.html
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
In what part of Oregon ?
Do you think it "not likely" that you might learn something of value from Prineville ?
Have you considered contacting the Oregon and Washington Association of Golf Course Superintendents ?
good luck
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
Basically, we treated all of the impervious runoff with vegetated swales, about 33 in all before discharging into one of several existing streams & creeks flowing through the property. The golf course fairways, greens and tee boxes all had subsurface collection (drain tiles) and at the discharge outlets we designed vegetated swales for treatment (some 37 additional swales).
I don't know if I mentioned it but there are major wetland impacts occurring in the development and the need for wetland mitigation permits resulted in all of the regulatory oversight. Even though Josephine county has some of the highest quality salmon habitat in the nation we are just now starting to think about storm water runoff quality. Very sad but better late than never, I guess.
I am interested in the Prinville course. We aren't too dissimilar in Southern Oregon. We are also planning on using treated waste water for irrigation. There will eventually be over two hundred home sites and all sewage will be collected by a STEP system, pumped about two miles to a remote treatment site and the treated water returned to augment the existing well based irrigation system.
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
Sounds like you've addressed most of the problems with sensible, low cost, solutions. The Prineville example may be instructive still, as might the new course near Medford ( sorry, can't remember the name of it). I live and work in Salem but have done some course designs near Bend, Lincoln City, Roseburg and some other areas. As you know, Oregon has a very wide range of climates so generalizations are dangerous.
good luck
RE: Golf Course Resort Water Quality
This was my first modern golf course project and you know what I found most interesting was that golf course designers (at least the big names) use a very vague drawing style and then throw away the plans and build what ever looks good in the field. A lot of our engineering involved fitting things in after the fact resulting in a very disjointed, decentralized design. If we had done this on paper, the normal way, through trial and error and optimization we would have created a much more efficient system by at least half. This isn't unique to golf course builders, most developers think they should be able to build by eye and just have us do the as-builts. But golf course people seem to get their way a lot.