By David Gould
In America’s drought-weary Southwest, the topic of water scarcity is never far from mind. It’s an urgent, complex issue prompting experimentation and new practices. These innovations, meant to address pervasive problems, can cause difficulty and even distress for golf operations.
For twelve facilities, in total seventeen 18-hole golf courses, in Las Vegas, Nevada, a recent change in municipal water policy threatens to increase the price of irrigation water by more than double in many cases. That’s because the water that goes on greens and fairways will no longer be the reclaimed, or effluent, variety –– it will be potable. The Las Vegas Valley Water District (LVVWD) is decommissioning the two treatment facilities that have been producing and distributing reclaimed water there, ending what could almost be called a way of life for area course operators.
“Indirect potable reuse” is at work here. Once reviled, the idea is receiving attention throughout the Colorado River Basin, where seven U.S. states rely on the mighty river for their water supply. In one of those states—Nevada—turning sewage into potable water, by means of a two-step or “indirect” process, is a longstanding practice.
Two factors contribute greatly to Nevada’s leadership in making sewer water drinkable: massive Lake Mead and a waterway called the Las Vegas Wash. Armed with those physical assets, the LVVWD treatment plants have been able to process wastewater such that it’s short of potable but still clean enough to flow into the wash and down to Lake Mead, with its limitless storage capacity. When water from the lake gets drawn out for use it gets processed yet again. Those are your two steps to potability.
In return for what it sends into the lake, the agency earns highly valuable “credits.” They boost the region’s share of Colorado River water beyond what it otherwise would be. For a desiccated, down-river region like greater Las Vegas, it’s an important overall plus.
This two-step procedure has historically been employed for only a portion of the incoming sewage water. The rest of it has been diverted to a pair of water recycling plants that produce effluent, which the LVVWD has been glad to sell to parks departments, contracting companies and golf courses. Indeed, the 17 Las Vegas courses serving as customers have dedicated pipes carrying effluent to them door-to-door.
Unfortunately, those pipes will soon run dry, as the recycling plants go into permanent shutdown. A decision was reached this year by the LVVWD to get out of the effluent business. In doing so, they will no longer bear the cost of operating those plants, a budgetary win. Meanwhile, their sole product will be a premium one, sold at a premium price. Flowing out from water-treatment plants will be the drinkable stuff only, and that’s what courses will have to irrigate with.
As a result they’re facing a brutal shock to their cost budgets. News of the decision and what it entails was delivered to course owners at a meeting in July. What came next was a discussion concerning how much the golf operators—on a phased-in basis—will pony up to irrigate with high-quality H20, not reclaimed water.
“The transition from non-potable to potable rates will increase prices at the affected golf courses by more than double in many instances,” reports Jeff Jensen, Southwest regional representative for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and an attendee at that July gathering. “Technology for water treatment has evolved, and the LVVWD’s decision reflects that. Every customer they had for effluent water is impacted by this.”
True enough, but the force of the blow to golf course budgets seemingly exceeds anything that parks departments and construction companies might endure. The latter usage is mainly about controlling dust on construction sites and the former involves an entity that exists alongside the LVVWD, under the potentially forgiving umbrella of government. Not to mention that turf maintenance standards on public parkland or even playing fields for competitive soccer and lacrosse teams are considerably below those of higher-end golf courses.
The loss of effluent and the resulting price shock for courses has triggered an energetic response from the golf community, as reported and to a good degree spearheaded by Ronnie Miles, in his role as the NGCOA’s Senior Director of Advocacy.
“Recycled water has been a key part of the sustainability effort, for a long period of time,” says Miles. “Golf courses were a vital market for this product.” The arrangement, in other words, has functioned smoothly and cooperatively. Over this span of time, the NGCOA and the golf community in general has kept in steady communication with Southwestern water districts. The fairways, as a distribution point for recycled water—and a revenue source for the systems—have been long valued and relied upon.
Jeff Jensen understands the pressure municipal water managers—and the tech companies they work with—are under. “Water shortages, especially in the Colorado River states, are a drought-driven crisis that calls for innovation and new best practices to emerge,” says Jensen. “On the golf side, we understand this fully, and we want to do our part. We’ve worked energetically to be part of the solution.”
All that said, Jensen would argue, golf is on the spot to remind government decision-makers that dealing a heavy blow to the golf infrastructure—and its contributions to environmental sustainability—does society little net good. They counter the “heat island” effect of urban development, provide permeable ground that filters stormwater contaminants and at the same time offer green space that just by being there enhances quality of life.
Land managers and golf course owners have been trying whatever they can to reduce per-acre water use, with notable success. Turning maintained, hitting-surface grass into desert landscape where the mowers and the spray-techs don’t go has made a notable difference. “At those 12 facilities, over 360 acres of turf in total have been converted to native conditions” Jensen reports, emphasizing the stewardship effort required to make that happen and the sustainability upgrade such a large swath of converted acreage represents.
The big cities of the Southwest all leverage golf for important economic and lifestyle benefits, Las Vegas as much or even more so than others. As noted, this high a spike in costs, arriving on short notice, has potential to put one or more of the 17 courses out of business. The regional golf industry has a long bullet list of economic-impact metrics to show for itself, under the umbrella figure of “$1.24 billion in direct activity,” as Jensen reports.
At the three courses Thom Blinkinsop oversees as Regional General Manager— Red Rock Country Club, Arroyo Golf Club and Siena Golf Club—irrigation costs “will double in the next five years,” he reports, if the initial proposal manages to go through. “That’s $500,000 in new costs for each of our three courses,” he says flatly. “Our viewpoint is that we’ve got to find a way to stair-step these changes more gradually—that’s basically all we’re asking.”
The twelve golf facilities, in total seventeen 18-hole courses, that Blinkinsop is informally representing have already helped themselves through a strength-in-numbers philosophy. The services of a legislative lobbyist have been retained, and the SNWA’s original negotiation process has been rebuffed. “We pushed back,” says Blinkinsop. “We communicated among ourselves and made it so the SNWA couldn’t talk to us one by one, which was their plan.” He and most of his fellow operators believe that maintaining composure and practicing diplomacy is the best course of action for all concerned. “Going public isn’t going to help either side,” Blinkinsop says.
Area courses have been suffering from the second part of a one-two regulatory punch, involving mandatory turf reduction. Years ago, the water authority made a proposal to golf operators: Convert traditional turfgrass to unmaintained desert landscape and receive a payment of $1.50 per square foot for the conversion work. Furthermore, irrigation costs for the remaining playable grass surface would be proportionally lower than before, bringing additional cost benefits via less water consumption.
“I cut my water bill in half at Siena via turf reduction,” Blinkinsop says. “We went from 6.3 acre-feet and went down to 3.6 acre-feet,” he explains, invoking a unit that is equal to about 325,000 gallons. With the help of that $1.50-per-acre credit, the Sienna course “basically broke even on the actual cost of the project.”
The entire campaign proved so fruitful that the golf operators who chose not to participate are now being forced to do so. Rather than comply, three of those courses—Revere, Angel Park and Southern Highlands—turned off their fairway sprinklers under the blazing summer sun. Meanwhile the renewed turf-reduction campaign is plaguing even the courses that cooperated originally. “Now there’s a ban on any parcel of purely decorative irrigated grass,” Blinkinsop says. “Small little swaths of it that every club has, usually in and around the clubhouse.” He says the cost to perform this work on scattered small areas is much higher, per acre, than doing so out on the open golf course.
Potable water doesn’t get sold the way effluent does. It’s got a long and bewildering roster of add-on charges that accumulate quickly. “You get charged a service fee, a commodity fee, an infrastructure fee, and something they call a reliability fee,” says Blinkinsop. “It’s $300 a month for every meter at every course, before you turn the water on. As for the fees on the main pipe or new pipe, it will be upwards of $2,000 before we pump an ounce of water per month.”
As irksome as those fees may be, the courses negotiating with the SNWA say they don’t mind paying them right away, if they can hang on to the per-unit cost they’ve been paying for recycled water through to the end of the original contract period, i.e., 2030. “At that point we’d rip off the bandaid,” Blinkinsop says. Meaning, they’d pay the full per-gallon price of the potable water, in addition to the fees. Somehow or other, during that half-decade transition time, the business model would evolve and shift in such a way as to maintain profitability for the golf operations.
Golf industry people who’ve kept up with the announcements and proposals say the demise of several courses due to escalating water costs is spoken of in almost casual fashion by water agency officials. The sword of Damocles that the historic drought has dangled over the river basin seems to have made prospects of heavy collateral damage just part of the overall drama.
An online article published last year by KTNV-13, the local ABC affiliate, disclosed that the area’s top 10 water users (among commercial entities) included several golf courses—Angel Park Golf Club at 452 million gallons, Southern Highlands Golf Club at just under 400 million and Revere Golf Club, which used 383 million. Simply hearing those numbers or reading them on a screen is bound to make a segment of the population decide that fewer golf courses is an eventuality—one potentially with benefits that outweigh the negatives. It is important to note that these are each 36 hole facilities, which is understandable to the golf industry, but likely not to those unfamiliar with the game.
That same article did state that Red Rock Country Club, one of Blinkinsop’s courses, “still ranked high on the list but cut 90,000,000 gallons year-to-year,” mainly due to a switch to more drought-tolerant grasses. Also striking a positive chord for the golf industry was a reference in the article to dramatic reductions in water use by “about half” of the 30 courses within the Las Vegas Valley Water District. These courses have “already reduced their yearly water usage from six acre feet to four acre feet, which saves about 1.3 million gallons of water every year,” an LVWWD spokesman said.
For the golf courses “that decided to pipe in” to the effluent plants when they got the offer to do so a dozen-plus years ago, it’s been a good and steady arrangement—Blinkinsop doesn’t deny that in the least.
“We paid $2.33 per thousand gallons year after year, no with add-on fees,” he says. Nor is it lost on him how vital it is to the government entities to gain additional “reverse-flow credits” and thus more water from the big lake. “In this part of the country,” he says, “water is our gold. More credits mean more water.” Which in turn means that housing tracts can be green-lighted and the region can avoid some kind of bleak, zero-growth future.
But there’s a large faction of higher-end home ownership in Las Vegas that’s found inside the gates of existing golf communities. Residents of these golf real estate developments are potentially part of the collateral damage from the loss of affordable effluent. Home builders will likely continue to want to use golf to bump the prices of the homes they put on the market.
So, there are constituencies in the region with the potential to help course operators mitigate the cost whammy this change in water policy threatens. In many ways the outcome of this controversy could hinge on whether Southern Nevadans decide in great numbers that desperate times rightly call for desperate measures.