Mother Jones
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This weekend, the world’s most accomplished golfers have gathered at Chambers Bay on Washington state’s Puget Sound for the most challenging golf major of them all—the US Open Championship. The course’s difficulty and Scotland-style “links” layout has been the talk of the golfing world, as have the unique grasses used on the fairways and greens. Indeed, even the most fair-weather of golfing fans will notice the course is much browner than the typical sites for golf championships. Ever-fussy golfers are already complaining, but the landscaping of Chambers Bay is a win for the environment.
According to the Alliance for Water Efficiency, a typical golf course soaks up between 100,000 and one million gallons of water a week; golf courses in California’s Palm Springs use on average 800,000 gallons per day—more water than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Golf resorts in dry states facing government-mandated water reductions and drought-shaming have begun to find ways to use recycled water and minimize the area they irrigate.
Chambers Bay—located in a region that’s also suffering from drought—aims to change golf courses’ wasteful reputation. The course is irrigated with reclaimed wastewater and fertilized with sewage from a nearby treatment plant. The groundskeepers landscape with native plants and have cleaned up land and marine habitats for local wildlife. Oh, and that brown grass everyone is fussing over? That’s Fescue, a drought resistant grass well-adapted to the relatively cool climate of Western Washington.
Ed Osann, who heads the water efficiency team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, praises efforts like those Chambers Bay have made—especially the fertilizer trick. Taking potable drinking water and spreading it on the ground, he says, simply “doesn’t make sense.”
Chambers Bay wasn’t always this way.
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The Best Golfers in the World Are Playing on a Poop-Watered Course
