Golf clubs paying to keep greens green

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - As the drought continues, golf course owners are having a tough time keeping the grass green.

Green grass is essential to attracting business, and it's costing some courses thousands of dollars a day just to maintain. Most courses draw water from rivers and wells, but in this heat, levels are low.

Thousand Oaks Golf Club, for example, has resorted to purchasing water from the township just to stay in the game.

When it comes to watering, Thousand Oaks picks the priority. The greens and fairways are green, but the roughs are starting to go brown.

"It's been a difficult summer for not having rain for a month or however long it's been," said Marking and Membership Sales Manager and Assistant Golf Professional Chris Johnson.

The water at Thousand Oaks comes from a retention pond. The Grand River, along with ground wells, feed the pond, but the wells are running low.

At 300,000 to 700,000 gallons of water a day needed to maintain the course, Thousand Oaks went to Plainfield Township to purchase the extra water they need.

"You just can't maintain the levels in the water, especially with the heat, with the evaporation and what you need to put out to combat the heat, it's tough to keep up with the level of the retention pond," said Johnson.

The township uses a hydrant to pump around 300 gallons of water per minute to the golf course.

"We would not be doing this, providing thousands and thousands of water a day to water the greens at Thousand Oaks if we thought that would in any way jeopardize our ability to serve our 10,000-plus customers," said Plainfield Township manager Robert Homan.

And Thousand Oaks is paying for it. The township estimates the club's water usage cost at $2,100 a day.

The township said with people watering their lawns, usage jumps from 3 million gallons in the winter to 10 million gallons a day in a dry summer like this one.

But officials said not to worry.

"Capacity of our plant is 16 million gallons a day," said Homan. "16 million, so we're a long way from that, so it's not a problem to accommodate Thousand Oaks in this emergency."

Thousand Oaks depends on member dues to pay for the course. The good news, Johnson said, is a lot of people are playing despite the heat.