SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA | The news on the water front here has not been good.
In fact, the drought that has gripped the Grand Canyon State for the past two decades is regularly described as “historic” and “the worst in 1,200 years.”
Water levels in the Southwest’s biggest and most important bodies of water – Lake Powell, which is located in Arizona and Utah, and Lake Mead, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada border – have been dropping at alarming rates. Both reservoirs, which are fed by the Colorado River and supply water to seven states, are at their lowest levels in history. As a result, farmers and homeowners have been forced to make due with less. The former have to cut back on all-important irrigation of their cropland and leave previously productive fields fallow, while residents are having in some cases to stop watering lawns and filling swimming pools.
How bad is the situation? The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water resource management, has drastically reduced in recent years the amount of water Arizona can take from the Colorado River. And the cut it must make for 2023 comes to 592,000 acre feet, which leaves the state with “only 21 percent of its annually allocated” supply from that source, according to a report late last summer in the Wall Street Journal. The article goes on to assert the amount of the reduction is equivalent to “about 300,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water,” which would stretch for some 145 square miles if placed next to one another in a rectangle.
To say water is a precious commodity in this desert state, which has seen its population nearly double in the past 30 years, is a gross understatement. And the issue has never been quite so front-and-center, with photographs and videos of dried-out lakes and river beds strewn with abandoned boats and even cars in some cases flashing across television screens during nightly news broadcasts and appearing in leading newspapers and magazines as well as on YouTube.
Then, there is the sense Arizona is ground zero for a drought that has been afflicting much of the country west of the Mississippi River.
Reasonable concerns raised by climate scientists about the debilitating drought in the Southwest add to the sense of urgency, as does the reality that people in this part of the world need to reduce their consumption of water. That includes those who already have been doing so.
Another issue is the in-fighting between the seven states making up the Colorado River Basin (Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and California) as to how much water each one is entitled to draw from that waterway, based on rights that in some cases were determined more than a century ago.
So, it seems an opportune time for Global Golf Post to examine just how serious the situation has become and what is being done to mitigate it, especially with some of the best golfers in the world coming here this week to compete in the WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale. After all, golf is a popular sport in Arizona, with some 350 courses that, according to a lobbying group called the Arizona Alliance for Golf, produced $6 billion in economic activity for the state in 2021 and recorded 16.6 million rounds. And each one of those courses uses water to keep portions of its layouts green.
... according to a survey conducted by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, courses in the U.S. used 29 percent less water in 2020 than they did in 2005.
Flying into or out of Phoenix these days can give golfers pause when they espy the verdant fairways, tees and greens of the dozens of golf courses located in and around the state capital. And the first impulse is to wonder just how much a part of the problem those layouts are. The AAG says golf is only a minor consumer of that resource.
The biggest user, according to an AAG study released last month, is Arizona’s agriculture industry, which produces everything from cotton and dates to potatoes and pecans. That sector accounts for some 73 percent of Arizona’s daily water usage for crop irrigation. Public supply, which includes domestic and commercial water usage, takes up 20.7 percent, while industrial and manufacturing are at 2.6 percent. Golf irrigation sits at 2 percent, a number that to Joe Foley, the executive director of the Arizona Golf Association, “plainly shows that the golf industry efficiently manages the vital resources we all depend on.”
That is good news for golfers, and an indication the game has been ahead of the curve when it comes to conserving water and finding more efficient ways to use it. Consider, for example, that in 1984, the state of Arizona decreed that any courses built from that time onward were limited to having 90 acres of turf. And according to a survey conducted by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, courses in the U.S. used 29 percent less water in 2020 than they did in 2005.
But problems precipitated by a severe lack of rainfall and snow pack persist. "Temperatures also have been increasing in the summer, and that causes plants to need and use more water," said Cole Thompson, director of turfgrass and environmental research at the USGA. "And the population growth that comes from increased urbanization and suburbanization means that those places will need more water for the people moving there."And that means the efforts by the golf industry to reduce consumption of that resource must continue.
In examining the matter of water conservation, it is important to note it is as much a monetary matter as it is an environmental one. That has had a way of compelling course owners and operators to more fully embrace the effort.
“Water is expensive,” said Bri Kenny, the manager of environmental science for Troon Golf, which is based in Scottsdale. “So, golf courses save money when they use less water.
“Less water also firms up fairways, which golfers seem to like because it makes their shots roll out. And less water means you are making your turf less susceptible to disease and better able to keep it in good condition.”
Scottsdale-based course architect Scott Miller, whose creations include the highly-rated Cholla track at the We-Ko-Pa Golf Club in Fort McDowell, northwest of Scottsdale, appreciates the trend as well as the water and money it saves.
“Overseeding uses lots of water, and I am seeing more and more places that are now only overseeding their fairways and not the rough,” he said. “They are only watering their fairways, too. And more and more of the older courses, the ones built before 1984, are getting rid of turf that is not essential to the design or playability of the course, to reduce the acreage that has to be watered.”
As an example, Kenny cites what has happened with Troon North’s two courses, Monument and Pinnacle, at the resort north of Scottsdale. “The average amount of turf for older courses is around 110 acres,” she said. “But the combined total for Monument and Pinnacle is now about that same number.”
She points to several other areas where course owners and operators have found ways to reduce water usage.
“They include installing much more technologically advanced and efficient irrigation systems that tell superintendents exactly how much, or how little, water their courses need,” she said. “Using more reclaimed water, too, and the Scottsdale area has a system of pipelines and booster pump stations that are designed specifically to supply treated wastewater for golf course irrigation. Planting grasses that do not need to be watered so much is another advance, and so is purifying excess water that is not used during the winter months and injecting it into the aquifer for storage and then recovery when we might have shortages.”
For this water shortage, there are no shortages of ways for golf to combat it. That puts the industry in a very good spot when it comes to doing its part.