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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

WSU golf course a water hazard

Scott Cornelius and Dianne French Special to The Spokesman-Review

Its motto is “World Class, Face to Face.” And Washington State University is face to face with a world-class dilemma.

In 2004, then-President Lane Rawlins decided to build a golf course on the Pullman campus. The old nine-hole course was deemed inadequate. It wasn’t classy enough to lure prospective donors to visit, and the golf team had to travel to compete. So raising private money to build the course might not have seemed like a bad idea, on the surface.

But the problem wasn’t on the surface. It was, and remains, underground, where the water table is dropping at the alarming rate of 1.5 feet per year. The irrigation water that WSU will suck from the Grande Ronde Aquifer to maintain the golf greens virtually guarantees a water supply crisis not only in Pullman but in nearby Moscow, home of the University of Idaho, and smaller communities in the Palouse region.

Two conservation groups and a private well owner are challenging the Washington Department of Ecology decision that effectively allows WSU to triple its pumping in order to water the golf course. The appellants will make their case in a proceeding that began Tuesday before the state Pollution Controls Hearings Board on the WSU campus.

If WSU is lucky, the conservationists will win. If they don’t, and the golf course juggernaut keeps rolling, the university’s hope for a reputation of sustainability will decline along with the water table. It will lose its moral authority in local communities, where people are asking why they should scrimp on water when WSU is so extravagant with it. The university will, in the worst-case but far from implausible scenario, jeopardize its very existence.

As a solution to this dilemma, the university is pinning its hopes on getting state money for a $12 million pipeline to bring treated effluent from Pullman’s wastewater treatment plant to irrigate its grounds, golf course included. The Washington Legislature did approve planning money for that, but former Gov. Gary Locke vetoed the bill. Perhaps the governor did not see a golf course as a top educational priority, what with the WSU library making painful cuts in its collection and WSU faculty being lured away by better-paying schools. Indeed, WSU has yet to raise private funds for the golf course and is diverting money from essential educational services.

In fairness, Rawlins, a golfer who has now retired in Pullman, didn’t make the golf-course decision alone. But when he urged the WSU Board of Regents to approve it, did he show the graph documenting the decline of the aquifer? Did he bring in scientists to explain that there is no evidence that this ancient underground source of water is being replenished? Did he invite the city and county officials who – knowing the aquifer’s days are numbered – are starting to plan reservoirs to capture snowmelt and systems to inject river water into the aquifer?

It’s time for some adaptive management. If the Pollution Control Board doesn’t speak up for the public interest and reverse Ecology’s water right decision, the WSU administration and regents should revisit the golf course decision. They should put the golf course on hold until wastewater irrigation is available. Better yet, they should realize that the dry Palouse hills are not the place for a lush green game and return the 315 acres to the research purposes for which they were intended. The Palouse Ridge Golf Club is scheduled to open this fall, so a change of direction would be expensive and embarrassing. It also would show tremendous leadership and be far less embarrassing and potentially catastrophic than the status quo.

Water levels are dropping 1.5 feet per year.

Cougar alumni, your voices especially need to be heard. Write to WSU’s new president, Elson Floyd, at PresidentsOffice@wsu.edu and demand real leadership on this issue. Given the choice, Floyd likely would not have created this world-class dilemma. But he hasn’t acted on the golf course issue. Perhaps he thinks there are more important matters to take before the regents than one critical to the university’s reputation and long-term existence. It’s hard to imagine what those might be.