Golf Course Resort Water Quality

[oregonpe]

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?

 

[cvg]

If you look at it from DEQ's standpoint, they can only review and approve your plan. If at some point down the road, the course management decides to change operational procedures and start using different fertilizers, DEQ would be none the wiser. They are wary of the old bait and switch technique.

 

[stormgirl]

If you are looking for a treatment solution check out Suntree Technolgies Golf Green Filter :

http://www.suntreetech.com/Products/Golf+Green+Filter/default.aspx

 

[RWF7437]

Also, look in to the City of Prinville's use of treated wastewater on their municipal golf course. I'm sure they have design help and, better yet, experience which would be useful to you.

good luck

 

[bimr]

Not likely, Los Angeles gets more rain than this part of Oregon. After all, Prineville sits on the tee box of the Great Basin, the largest sand trap in North America - a desert stretching from the middle of Oregon to the Mexican border and beyond, a wasteland known to the locals as the Great Sandy Desert.

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

 

[RWF7437]

Oregonpe,

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

 

[oregonpe]

Thanks for your response. This question was posted quite a while ago we have since completed our design and received DEQ approval. We are in Josephine County near Grants Pass, Oregon. The resort we are working on is intended to be very high quality (from a residential and golf standpoint) similar to Bandon Dunes on the Oregon Coast.

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.

 

[RWF7437]

OregonPE,

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

 

[oregonpe]

RFW7437,
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.