Golf Course Water Issues

Groundwater: What Can The Golf Course Industry Do to Protect This Valuable Natural Resource?

The Ogallala Aquifer, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, is a vast yet shallow underground water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it lies under about 174,000 square miles in portions of the eight states of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It was named in 1899 by N.H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. It waters one fifth of U.S. irrigated land.

In some parts of the Ogallala Aquifer that stretches across eight states in the Great Plains, aquifer depletion has caused increased pumping costs and decreased land values, forcing some farmers into bankruptcy. The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters per year. Some estimates say it will dry up in as little as 25 years. Many farmers in the Texas High Plains, which rely particularly on the underground source, are now turning away from irrigated agriculture as they become aware of the hazards of over pumping. Golf courses in this region are facing a big problem in this region. If the aquifer is dwindling and the cities in the south are turning into dust bowls, there will be no water for golf courses to water new grasses and already existing grasses properly.

The aquifer's water quality is very poor. Industrial agriculture with its reliance on chemicals and its failure to adequately address soil erosion problems is guilty of depleting water resources. Ignorance and carelessness are in fact the main factors behind the increasing water quality deterioration. First, of course, any further ground water has to be pumped from deeper and deeper levels, and such water is not only more expensive to extract in terms of deeper wells and more powerful pumps, but is more likely to be chemically poor in quality. Second, the drop in the water table indicates that more ground water is being pumped than is being recharged, so that water supplies of the future are being mortgaged for present gain. Third, there are indirect effects of lowering the water table that are more insidious but more damaging. Natural vegetation may no longer be able to put down its roots deep enough to reach ground water, especially if there is a prolonged dry season, and it is degraded.

The Attorney General's office decided to examine pesticide use on Long Island golf courses because pesticides pose special risks on the Island. Long Island's nearly three million people depend on groundwater as their only source of drinking water. This irreplaceable resource is vulnerable to contamination by surface-applied pesticides. Large areas of the island's groundwater lie beneath a sandy, porous surface soil layer with little organic matter to adsorb pesticides. This type of soil provides little if any barrier against contaminants reaching the groundwater.

Although Long Island's geology and the dependence of such a large population on a single source of drinking water is unusual, groundwater quality in other areas of the state may also be jeopardized by pesticide use. The concerns raised in the report could apply to several other parts of the state where turf care pesticides are heavily used over aquifers. Therefore, the problem needs to be looked at because of the amount of people at risk. Some of the side effects of the pesticides used includes damage to a fetus, impairs the nervous system, decrease in red blood cell count and damage to the eyes.

The State Legislature has already acted to protect Long Island's groundwater from some threats by ordering all landfills to close because of the danger they posed by leaking contaminants. The Legislature also enacted legislation banning certain septic tank cleaners