PULLMAN, Wash. -- The new golf course at Washington State
University will use too much water, say environmentalists who are
asking the state to prevent the course from opening.
The 18-hole Palouse Ridge Golf Club, scheduled to open this
fall, could require more than 100 million gallons of water per year
in an area where water is already scarce and the aquifer level is
dropping, according to the Center for Environmental Law & Policy.
"We simply don't have the water to squander on a golf course,"
Scotty Cornelius, a CELP member in Pullman, said Tuesday.
Cornelius, the Palouse Water Conservation Network and the
Palouse Group Sierra Club have appealed a state water rights
decision to allow WSU to irrigate the golf course. A hearing is
scheduled in November.
CELP said its estimates are based on its analysis of WSU's own
engineering documents and other sources.
But WSU officials say the $8 million course, paid for by private
donations, will need about 55 million gallons of water per year.
The Grande Ronde aquifer beneath Pullman can easily supply that for
hundreds of years, they say.
In addition, the school is installing technology to make sure no
water is wasted at the course, which is intended to lure more
people to this college town of 25,000 people. The only course now
in Pullman is a 9-hole course at WSU.
"We've got the most advanced computer irrigation system
available to man out there," said Mel Taylor of the WSU Office of
Business Affairs. "There are 3,000 sprinkler heads and each one is
tied into the computer."
Cornelius said water levels in the Grande Ronde aquifer have
been dropping for decades. He noted that WSU plans to spend $2.7
million over six years to conserve about 14 million gallons of
water per year across the campus.
The aquifer, which is used primarily by WSU, the University of
Idaho and the cities of Pullman and Moscow, Idaho, has an estimated
600 years of water left, Keith Bloom, an administrator in the
school's Capital Planning and Development office, said Tuesday.
The school is also seeking permission from the state to treat
and reuse water from its sanitary systems to irrigate the golf
course, Bloom said.