the high price of water (or water regulations) and the future of golf

From John Paul Newport in the WSJ...

Last December, I got a taste of what golfers are likely to experience, if not quite so starkly, in the years ahead. I played a course in Georgia whose fairways, due to strict drought restrictions across the northern third of the state, hadn't been watered in months.

Restrictions in the midst of drought are more defensible than chronic regulations-- and especially, subsidies for water that take money from the general public, often give benefits to a special interest group (farmers), and discourage conservation.

The look was a little eerie. Unlike links courses in the British Isles, which are meant to play hard, fast and usually brown, this course at Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro was designed for lushness, but now only the putting surfaces were green. The fairways had not been over-seeded for winter, and everything was parched.

I can't say the round wasn't fun. Our drives rolled out to ego-boosting distances and our lies on the dormant turf were usually quite good. But it wasn't what one expects 70 miles west of the famously green course at Augusta National (which, luckily, is in a county that escaped the most stringent water limitations).

The drought in northern Georgia illustrates the delicate balance between rampant development and natural resources. Metropolitan Atlanta, in the heart of the drought region, has doubled in population since 1980, to more than five million, while its main source of water, Lake Lanier, has stayed the same. Twenty years ago, this drought probably wouldn't have forced city golf courses to curtail watering much, if at all.

"What's happening in Georgia and elsewhere raises important issues that golf has to consider," says Greg Lyman, the national director of environmental programs at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. "Every gallon of water has economic value, and communities have to ask themselves: 'What is the value of golf?' "

Again, this question is ideally asked when the "economic value" is connected to price. Is that the case in Georgia or elsewhere?

As an industry, golf is girding for battle on water issues....present a unified lobbying front.

Battle? Lobby? As in battling government regulations that would restrict their use or lobbying for subsidies?

The trigger issue was the government's relief effort after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Storm-damaged courses, it seems, were lumped in with massage parlors and casinos and declared ineligible for federal aid. That isn't proper respect, the golf honchos declared, for an industry that they documented creates two million jobs and generates $195 billion in economic activity....

Absolutely! Why treat industries different? On the other hand, why are we handing out money to businesses vs. relying on insurance?

It's clear from the pioneering work that some courses have done in reducing water usage how much less water golf overall could get by on.

Four years ago, for instance, the Olympic Club and two other courses in the San Francisco area collaborated on a project to reclaim wastewater before it was discharged into the ocean. The courses now irrigate exclusively with this nonpotable "gray water," as do 12% of U.S. courses.

Many courses have also scaled back the acreage they maintain as turf, substituting low-maintenance vegetation in areas where golfers are unlikely to hit balls. Moisture-metering systems, coupled with watering systems that use as many as 3,000 computer-controlled sprinkler heads, allow some superintendents to spot-water only when and where the turf needs it.

Scientists are also developing breeds of grass that require less water, such as paspalum, which can tolerate saltwater.

Some of these techniques don't make financial sense for courses in areas where water is still relatively abundant. In the arid Southwest, however, they are often the only way golf hangs on....