No enforcement, uneven transparency on golf water rules

Golf courses are supposed to be doing their part to save water. Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandatory water restrictions require golf courses that pump groundwater from their own wells to limit watering to two days per week, or to reduce their consumption by 25 percent.

Ordinary Californians have stepped up: Homes and businesses cut their water use 27 percent in June, and the state’s largest cities all met their targets. Many golf courses are taking the drought seriously as well, as evidenced by the brown grass and desert landscaping that have become increasingly common at Coachella Valley golf courses.

But are most golf courses following the rules?

It’s an impossible question to answer. With uneven transparency from the golf industry and no enforcement from the state, water use at many golf courses remains shrouded in mystery, a Desert Sun investigation has found.

Over the past two weeks, The Desert Sun contacted more than 50 Coachella Valley golf facilities covered by the new water rules in an effort to find out whether and how they’re complying. Representatives for more than three-fifths of those facilities either didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment or declined to be interviewed.

That silence underscores the difficulty of knowing whether golf courses with their own wells are doing their part to save water. State officials told The Desert Sun they’re unlikely to enforce the restrictions on those golf courses, or even to request data on how much water they’re saving.

“It would be easy enough to demand that all water users provide basic information about how much water they’re using and where that water comes from,” said Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute. “Collecting this kind of basic information is the job of the state, and local water agencies. It shouldn’t fall on the media or the public to try and dig this information out.”

Brown’s statewide water restrictions, which took effect June 1, require California homes and businesses to cut their water use 25 percent from June 2015 to February 2016, relative to the same period two years ago.

Golf courses have two options, as do other commercial, industrial and institutional properties that don’t get their water from one of the state’s 400-plus water agencies. They can either limit outdoor irrigation with potable water to two days per week, or reduce potable water consumption by 25 percent from June to February.

Of the 53 golf facilities contacted by The Desert Sun, 20 described the steps they’re taking to cut back by 25 percent. None chose the water-two-days-per-week option, which golf experts say would kill grass.

It’s likely that some of the other 33 golf facilities are trying to follow the rules, despite their silence. Seven of them are getting rebates from the Coachella Valley Water District to tear out grass.

But in the absence of information, it’s hard to know who’s following the rules and who’s flouting them.

“People are naturally going to be skeptical and assume that the absence of information means that the information would show that they’re not doing their part, that they’re cheating,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a San Rafael-based nonprofit that advocates for transparency in government.

Scheer believes golf courses should proactively release data showing how much water they’re saving.

“They have customers, and it would be very, very bad for their business if their customers and their neighbors and the citizens of the communities in which they operate — who have the ultimate political power — believe that they might well be cheating,” Scheer said. “If I were sitting in their shoes, I would be anticipating that backlash.”

Even among golf courses that told The Desert Sun they were trying to cut back by 25 percent, some didn’t know how their water use in June and July compared to the same months in 2013, the baseline being used by the state. Some compared this year’s consumption to last year’s, or cited reductions over the past five to 10 years. Others described changes that will save water in the long term, but may or may not get them to 25 percent from June to February.

Golf industry officials say most courses are taking extraordinary steps to reduce their water use. But they also say that in the absence of a reporting requirement, it’s difficult to know exactly how much a given course is saving.

“I’ve seen golf courses in the desert, and quite honestly, some look browned out and distressed in a way they’ve never looked before,” said Craig Kessler, director of governmental affairs for the Southern California Golf Association. “Whether that particular course is meeting the 25 percent, or exceeding it, or falling a little short — there’s no way of knowing that. But there is a way of knowing that they’re making a good-faith effort to comply.”

When Brown called for a statewide 25 percent water cutback on April 1, he tasked the State Water Resources Control Board with making it happen. By mid-May, the water board had issued a long list of new rules.

Those rules include restrictions on individual actions — no watering down your driveway with a hose, no watering your lawn right after it rains — and restrictions on businesses. They also require the state’s 400-plus water agencies to reduce consumption by amounts ranging from 8 percent to 36 percent, or else face massive fines.

Every month, the water board publishes data showing how much each water agency reduced its consumption. While the board hasn’t issued any fines yet, it said last month it would impose new requirements on 16 of the worst-performing water agencies, including the Coachella Valley Water District and Mission Springs Water District.

For golf courses that pump groundwater from their own wells, not following the rules is punishable by fines of up to $500 per day. But the water board has no plans to systematically enforce those rules. The reason, officials say, is because they’re already stretched thin policing water agencies.

“We’re not the highway patrol,” said Max Gomberg, a senior environmental scientist with the water board. “We’re managing a lot of different things here, and we want this regulation to be effective, and we know enforcement is part of making it effective. But we do have limited resources, and we’re going to deploy them where they’re likely to get us the biggest water savings.”

That strategy might make sense in other parts of the state, where golf courses are relatively minor water users. But in the Coachella Valley, they pump nearly one-quarter of the water that’s removed from the underground aquifer each year.

Pressed on that statistic, Gomberg said the water board might have to re-evaluate its enforcement strategy.

“We may determine down the road that it’s a good use of our resources, maybe to focus specifically on the Coachella Valley region, for self-supplied entities, and look to hold them accountable,” he said. “But I can’t say that with certainty.”

The state’s drought regulations say golf courses should have information on hand showing how they’re complying with the new rules, in case the water board decides to ask them for it. For now, though, water officials have no plans to ask golf courses to submit that information, unless they receive complaints about a particular course.

At the very least, Gleick said, the water board should require golf courses to submit information on their water use. In the long run, he said, the board needs more funding for enforcing water restrictions.

“The hope is that golf courses and all water users will abide by the laws and the rules set out by the state, with or without enforcement,” Gleick said. “But of course reality is often somewhat different, and it would be nice if there were a way to identify and punish any water user that’s abusing our water.”

At some Coachella Valley golf courses, it’s clear that serious efforts are underway to cut water use. You can see it in the wide swaths of brown grass, and in the workers tearing out turf and replacing it with desert landscaping.

Eighteen of the valley’s 122 golf courses have been approved for grass removal rebates from the Coachella Valley Water District. Among them is Marrakesh Country Club in Palm Desert, a Moroccan themed-community where pale pink homes brush up against the edges of an 18-hole, short-game course.

Marrakesh is starting to remove three and a half acres of grass from the golf course, and it’s applying less water to the remaining grass. In June and July, the course cut its water use 25-28 percent relative to two years ago, superintendent Orlando Delgado said.

Aesthetically, Delgado’s goal is for desert landscaping to “frame” smaller expanses of verdant grass. By cutting down on turf, he said, superintendents can keep the remaining grass in good shape while still saving water.

“We want to water our turf 100 percent when the homeowners are here, to make it beautiful,” he said.

Local golf officials say that while a small minority of golfers have complained about courses that aren’t as lush as they used to be, the vast majority understand the severity of the drought and know cutting water use is a necessity.

Some golfers are enthusiastic about the changes. Mary McConnell, a former gardener who was golfing with a friend at Marrakesh on Tuesday, enthusiastically explained why she supports replacing turf with desert landscaping.

“It can be very pretty, and very well done. That’s the secret,” she said, adding that she xeriscaped her own lawn more than a decade ago.

For golf courses looking to cut back by 25 percent between June and February, experts say it’s important to save more than 25 percent over the summer, when the greatest savings are possible. That way, even if they don’t hit 25 percent in the winter months, they’ll still meet the target over the nine-month period.

From a business perspective, it might also be easier to save over the summer. There are fewer golfers over the summer, and most of them are locals who probably understand the drought situation, Kessler said. That will change in the winter, when snowbirds descend on the Coachella Valley.

“They show up year after year after year to enjoy the fruit of the desert, and they’ll discover California is in a bit of a distressed situation in 2016,” Kessler said. “Are they as in tune with the problems we have here in California as Californians might be? That’ll be the concern. We’re not there yet.”

At Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage, water use on the golf course was 594 acre-feet last year — down from 645 acre-feet in 2013, an 8 percent reduction, superintendent Roger Compton said. This year, Compton expects to be down to about 500 acre-feet, a 22 percent cut from two years ago.

“We’re always in a drought here in the desert. What we need to do is quit deficit pumping, quit wasting,” Compton said. “I hope this is waking people up.”

Thunderbird has cut water use by shutting off sprinklers where the Whitewater Wash goes through the golf course, and by watering around the edges of the course just four days per week. It’s a common strategy for golf officials trying to cut back by 25 percent: Let the least important parts of the course go brown.

That’s what’s happening at Desert Princess Country Club in Cathedral City, which stopped overseeding much of its course in the winter seven or eight years ago, director of golf Rand Veal said. The course is also removing seven and a half acres of turf and replacing its 30-year-old sprinkler system with more efficient technology. Desert Princess officials expect to spend $3.2 million on those projects.

“It’s part of the times we’re in,” superintendent Jonas Conlan said. “(The members) understand it. They’re probably not happy about it, don’t like it. But it’s the times we’re in.”

Some golf courses have argued that because they cut water use substantially before 2013, it’s unfair that state officials are asking them for more savings. It’s a common refrain, from private homes to water agencies to golf courses: We shouldn’t be punished for being ahead of the curve.

Take Indian Springs Golf Club. Five years ago, the Indio course cut its water use 30 percent by reducing overseeding from 130 acres to less than 50 acres, general manager Neil Finch said. Asked how Indian Springs is complying with the new restrictions, Finch responded, “I’ve already told you, I started reducing mine by 30 percent five years ago.”

“We’re not the villains,” he said. “It’s really easy to beat up on the golf courses, but we’ve been working hard and trying to be good stewards.”

Kessler noted that water agencies were assigned cutback targets based on how much water their customers use — a way to avoid penalizing homes and businesses that have already cut back. But the restrictions are the same for all golf courses, which Kessler said is unfair to courses that have “played all the cards that are really available in the deck.”

“There has to be some incorporation of past conservation,” he said.

There’s no question that California’s mandatory water restrictions apply to water that’s pumped out of the ground. It’s unclear whether they apply to water that comes from the Colorado River.

For years, Coachella Valley water managers have worked to bring more Colorado River water to golf courses, new developments, housing tracts and other large water users. Their goal has been to protect the valley’s over-pumped groundwater aquifer. Two years ago, a Desert Sun investigation found that water levels in valley wells had fallen an average of 55 feet since 1970.

But the Colorado River Basin is now enduring a 16th year of drought, and experts say it’s increasingly clear that demand for river water exceeds supply — drought or no drought. Lake Mead and Lake Powell, massive reservoirs meant to bank river water during wet years, have hit record lows in recent months.

According to Coachella Valley Water District data, local golf courses used nearly 25,500 acre-feet of river-water in 2014 — more than 8.3 billion gallons. The water district, which has pushed golf courses to switch from groundwater to a blend of river water and recycled water, has argued that river water isn’t “potable,” meaning it isn’t covered by Brown’s mandatory water restrictions.

Some experts have responded that even though the non-treated river water used on golf courses isn’t “potable,” the reality is that tens of millions of people drink purified river water. That’s true in the Coachella Valley, where water managers allow large amounts of river water to sink into the ground in “percolation ponds,” replenishing the aquifer.

State officials told The Desert Sun earlier this summer they believe Colorado River water is covered by Brown’s executive order. But they also said they were still working out the implications of that.

Asked this month whether golf courses will be required to reduce consumption of Colorado River water, Gomberg said, “We may take a position on that soon.” He didn’t say what that position would be, but he criticized the argument that river water isn’t drinking water.

“No one should be gaming the system,” he said. “People who want to say this isn’t really a drinking water supply, due to technical consideration or legal interpretation ABC, you name it — it just calls into question whether there’s gaming going on, or whether people are really just trying to understand and comply to the best of their ability.”

Asked whether Colorado River water should be covered by the drought restrictions, Kessler said the golf industry “doesn’t want to get in the middle of that, or broach an opinion of that.” But his association is encouraging all members to cut overall water use by 25 percent, regardless of where their water comes from.

“We just want to see voluntary 25% cutbacks,” Kessler said.

Sammy Roth writes about energy and water for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at sammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.