Editorial: Golf range’s water woes need urgent attention, fix

An extended winter that was so good for the region’s ski areas gave way to a bleak spring for its golf courses.

Wind, rain, persistent chill. Who reaches for the clubs on a day like that?

And to make matters worse at the city’s revered Indian Canyon Golf Course, runoff problems have turned the driving range into an odorous swamp that sent staff for their waders to retrieve any range balls not swallowed by the muck.

As city officials and the course’s faithful patrons know, however, ponding woes aren’t new this year. They have nagged Indian Canyon for several seasons. Limited efforts to fix what’s wrong haven’t done the trick, but this year – possibly because 2011’s relentless torrents exaggerated the issue – the situation has city officials’ attention and has triggered a series of meetings.

Meetings mean something only if they lead to constructive action, of course.

It would be easy to sweep this issue aside as just the golfing community’s concern, but this region’s public golf courses are more than a recreational resource for the few. They are a remarkable civic asset with respect to tourism and economic growth. The courses here have a reputation for class and affordability that most other communities envy, and Indian Canyon is one of the most striking showpieces. The need for a solution is urgent.

With the beginning of summer only two days away (officially, that is), the worst manifestation of the slimy spring is over and warming weather will offer relief for the balance of this year. But that’s of no help if the time isn’t used to make sure problems are identified and resolved before next spring.

The onset of Indian Canyon’s difficulties appears to coincide with redesign work done about six years ago when a 12-inch culvert was installed under the parking lot to channel stormwater runoff from nearby Assembly Road to the driving range. But the immediate area was seeing development activity around that time, too, including a 70-unit apartment complex, which required a zone change to high-density – and which slopes downhill toward the driving range. Owner Kirk Hill says, however, that his property includes a catchment basin equipped with a pump sufficient to handle a 100-year flood.

The fact is, no one knows precisely where the fault lies, but the consensus is there are multiple culprits. Doing appropriate hydrological tests to provide clarity is a necessary early step so follow-up corrections will prevent excessive water collection in the future, not merely facilitate cleanup after the fact.

Once the on-site solutions are in place, though, the city Parks Department would do well to examine its internal organization and procedures to find out why this problem has been allowed to persist uncorrected for this many years.

That, too, requires a fix.