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Erosion control projects put golf ahead of the curve

Mark Johnson

The finished product from an erosion control project at North Shore CC in Northbrook, Ill. This is a pond just off the club’s 15th hole. Photo courtesy of F. Dan Dinelli, CGCS

Editor’s note: Inside Your Environment periodically will present information being featured or archived on the Environmental Institute for Golf Web site. For more, visit www.eifg.org.

When images of a mountain stream come to mind, it’s easy to visualize pristine clear waters bordered by pine trees with colorful, fish lurking in the shadows.

But what would you do if that stream was in your backyard and in imminent danger of becoming polluted by a large sewer line that could easily become ruptured with the next heavy rain? Well, if you’re Tony Lashier, CGCS at the Resort at The Mountain in Welches, Ore., you get proactive and develop a stream restoration plan that not only fixes the problem, but creates additional aquatic habitat.

That’s just what Lasher, a 14-year GCSAA member, did after heavy rains caused localized flooding along the Salmon River, a designated National Wild and Scenic River that runs through the course and is home to coho salmon, Chinook salmon, winter steelhead and rainbow trout. The flooding exposed a sewer line that services his surrounding community and eroded more than 100 linear feet of soil from the stream bank, sending it into the river and adding to the river’s downstream sedimentation, a common pollutant in waterways across the nation.

Lasher knew that an exposed sewer line along a sensitive river like the Salmon was a disaster waiting to happen. The 2000 National Water Quality Inventory from the EPA identified bacteria, siltation and habitat alterations as the three leading pollutants of waterways. If a major sewer line such as the one exposed by the flooding were to dump its contents into the Salmon River, the pathogenic pollutant load would be tremendous, not to mention the amount of sedimentation caused by the erosion of the stream bank.

As a result, Lasher coordinated a significant stream restoration project, which is the highlighted case study in this month’s “Green Links,” featured on The Environmental Institute for Golf’s Web site at www.eifg.org. He worked with natural resource agencies and local governments to obtain grant monies.

Duane Bishop, a district fisheries biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, worked with Lasher and Ed Hooper, the owner of the resort, on this project and says, “I thought it was both exciting and interesting to talk about riparian forest types and habitat for salmon spawning and rearing with two people who operated a golf course. After the introduction, I was amazed at what had been accomplished to date, largely from thousands of hours of volunteer labor.”

Superintendents like F. Dan Dinelli, CGCS at North Shore Country Club in Northbrook, Ill., have put erosion control and bank stabilization at the top of their project lists not only for streams, but for ponds as well. One of Dinelli’s projects involved extensive erosion control around several of his course’s ponds (pictured above). In his case study, “Pond Improvements Provide Better Water Quality and Habitat for Aquatic Life,” which can also be found at www.eifg.org, the 24-year GCSAA member says, “North Shore Country Club established a goal to improve water quality and aesthetics of the water features on the course. The improvements included bank stabilization and revegetation for erosion control. Further enhancements included the creation of habitat, installation of aerators and the incorporation of buffer areas for pollution control and improved water quality.”

Mark Johnson is GCSAA’s environmental programs specialist.

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