GARBAGE IN, GOLF OUT

As available land disappears from metropolitan areas, landfills may be the few holes left to course developers.

by Brett Avery

BUILD A GOLF COURSE a day. That bumper-sticker slogan has served the game well so far this decade with a steady stream of courses coming on line. Continuing this growth will equate to more starting times and, ultimately, more happy golfers.

Yet consider what keeping this pace means to the landscape as we enter the third millennium. Every course built leaves one less plot for the next. "Good" land is dwindling. Equate it to a game of sandlot baseball, where captains pick their players in direct relation to their ability. One day, golf's last option will be on a par with The Bad News Bears.

The problem of dwindling acreage becomes acute in metropolitan areas, where the last large tracts were swallowed up long ago. The excessive cost of land prevents private developers from razing a couple strip malls and the surrounding neighborhood, so they venture into the hinterlands. Where does that leave close-in communities whose municipal courses are overrun with players? Those towns hear the course-a-day chant and look at the only open spaces that remain.

Landfills.

Think Los Angeles, where millions are crammed into a smoggy basin. Think Chicago, pushed up against Lake Michigan. Think any of dozens of cities that have outgrown their boundaries. Where else can a suburb, scratching to develop a recreational area that doubles as a cash generator, turn for land?

"I've got a feeling that it takes a special kind of developer to build on a landfill," says Charlie Neiderman, who for the last six years has worked toward turning a closed landfill in Orange County, Calif., into an 18-hole course. "But if the demand for land is so great that it's the only option, then it probably will be done."

When it comes to operating golf courses on landfills, California is the country's petri dish. It has at least a dozen such examples, roughly one of every three in the country. The layman equates landfills with the stench of garbage, and turns up his nose at the prospect of a weekend 18 on a mountain of gaseous trash. Landfills are distasteful as neighbors and contain any number of hazardous substances, be they biological, chemical or toxic.

Chances are, however, you would not recognize a landfill "rehabilitated" into a golf course: the TPC at Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Fla., where the PGA Tour first played in 1984; Twins Wells between Dallas and Fort Worth; Settler's Hills outside Chicago; Renaissance Park or Charles T. Myers in Charlotte, N.C.; Silverbell in Tucson and Cave Creek in Phoenix; The Hamptons near Norfolk, Va.; Fairwinds in Fort Pierce, Fla. They all play, look and smell like they were built on virgin land.

"We're paying a premium for building and playing on a landfill," attests David Lee, superintendent of the 27 holes at Englewood Golf Course in suburban Denver. "It's not cheap to run a golf course on a landfill. But it's golf, and in our case it was the only option."

Landfills are an American specialty, and monster landfills are the norm. As each municipality was born it found a hole in the ground and filled it with junk, most times spots no more than a couple acres. As the population grew so did the dump, and about 20 years ago mega-landfills became the norm. Orange County is typical, with four operating landfills that will encompass 3,000-plus acres, or about five square miles. With lines growing at the starter's window, that's a month's worth of back nines.

Building a landfill course is a lesson in infrastructure. Everyone has played with their mashed potatoes to shape an imaginary hole. With a landfill course, however, you turn the plate over and build on its rounded underside. The only problem with that analogy is that the plate is more like molded gelatin, constantly shifting and settling. The architect and developer cannot alter the gelatin's basic shape. And they cannot pile so much dirt atop it that the course sinks through the cap (a clay layer that seals like plastic wrap).

Methane gas, decomposition's pungent byproduct, and random pieces of trash migrate upward as everything settles and disintegrates. We haven't even discussed regulatory red-tape on local, county, state and federal levels. Building on virgin land, by comparison, is gravy.

"It may seem insurmountable to build a golf course on a landfill," says Richard Haughey of California-based EMCON, a waste disposal management firm which counts Shoreline Golf Links in Mountain View, Calif., among its projects. "It takes a marriage of those knowledgeable of regulatory practices as well as those who understand golf course construction and maintenance."

That was the hard lesson learned in the first 30-odd years of building on closed landfills. The difference between the initial wave of the 1950s and 1960s and those of the last 10 years is the difference between Mercury-era astronauts and those on the space shuttle. The first group had few creature comforts and flew by the seat of their pants; shuttle astronauts are in the first-class cabin of a 747, taking that early trial-and-error for granted.

Mercury-era courses were built by operators who spread some topsoil on a closed landfill, planted some seeds and then dealt with turf-choking methane leaks, irrigation water seeping through the cap with who-knows-what bubbling to the surface, and settling that opened giant fissures. The next-generation courses are pushing the envelope in agronomy and architecture, discovering methods that will enhance the use of the most toxic of sites.

How, then, does a community weigh the recreational needs of its residents against the desperate measure of building on a landfill? Here is the king of incentives: Among the regulatory land mines is a requirement that landfill operators monitor sites for 30 years, minimum. That costs big -- envision a mortgage in the millions. As long as someone's going to stay on site, monitoring methane gas production and settling, they might as well sell some green fees, too. In the best cases, golf revenues more than cover the regulatory costs.

Talking of 30-year periods hints that this process is not for the weak of calendar. Landfills operate on far lengthier timetables than mere mortals. Sure, Orange County has four gargantuan landfills. The first to close will top out at 185 acres in about six years. County officials have already deemed it unsuitable for a course. The one in Brea is 678 acres, but it won't close completely until 2013. And the 725-acre one in Irvine is slated to top out in 2024, at which time Tiger Woods will be prepping for the Senior PGA Tour.

Orange County illustrates the timetable. Neiderman knows why it takes a special kind of developer to build on a landfill. The key word is patience. Neiderman arrived at the county's Coyote Canyon landfill in 1990 to direct the facility's closure. Coyote Canyon sits among a series of ridges; one side of the landfill overlooks the Pacific, the other clear across the L.A. basin to the mountains. It is scenery that makes golfers drool. Orange County wanted to build as quickly as possible, to recoup its post-closure costs.

About that time California officials and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, stung by any number of Superfund debacles, enacted tougher closure regulations. Coyote Canyon was the first capped under those guidelines, and the extra red tape held up the process for nearly two years. Finally in March 1994, well behind schedule, the last of the cap went in place and the county prepared to buy the site from the landfill operator. And then, horror of horrors, Orange County went bankrupt and couldn't scrape up the dough.

"I'd like to think it will be built in less than a decade, even now," Neiderman says with a measured patience. "We were set back a year just because we've had problems acquiring the landfill." Could the whole mess possibly become any more difficult? "Until I lived it," Neiderman says, "I didn't know if I could have given you an answer."

The headaches don't end once a community has the landfill capped and an architect sketches a proposed layout. Build a course improperly on virgin land and the superintendent might need a few years to correct the errors. Build a course improperly on a landfill and the superintendent might never get rid of the flaws.

David Lee knows that situation all too well. The superintendent at Englewood, in the southern portion of Denver's sprawl, has a course with three nines built in three decades: a first nine, a second nine and a par-3 layout. Like rings on a tree, researchers can examine Englewood and trace the sophistication of building courses on landfills.

As a small landlocked suburb which grew rapidly, Englewood found itself lacking vacant land for a course, a distinct negative in golf-happy Colorado. The municipality bought a tract beside the South Platte River from nearby Sheridan; the land was a former gravel operation, with pits nearly 40 feet deep, that had then outlived its usefulness as a landfill.

Enter the course builders typical of that Mercury era. The first nine, ill-conceived and horribly executed from the start, is a legacy to landfill course disasters. Remember, this was before EPA regulations became hypercritical, when landfill operators were not as accountable for what went into a dump, let alone what sealed it.

"The soil cap was virtually non-existent," Lee says. "Most of the course was covered by less than a foot of topsoil. In some places it was only two inches deep."

Garbage came floating through what little turf grew. Methane leaks turned all but the rare patch into withering, brown wisps. Plug one leak and methane, lighter than air, would find another route to the surface and kill more grass. Water used for irrigation seeped through the cap, exacerbating the methane problems. Years after its construction, Lee says, it has probably cost Englewood more time and money to repair the first nine than build it properly.

Fast forward to 1982. By a two-vote margin the town approves the money to build a second nine. By now the regulators have a few more teeth. Without an extensive methane monitoring system beneath the cap, and lacking an inexpensive source of topsoil for a cushion above the cap, Englewood builds with ingenuity. With minor modifications in shaping soil the layout becomes more entertaining than the rudimentary first nine. A better understanding of irrigation and drainage eliminates most methane problems.

Fast forward again to 1994. Lee and his crew, by now more knowledgeable than some firms that sell themselves as landfill-course construction experts, build the par-3 course and an adjacent practice area, even sinking girders for towers rigged with netting to keep balls from going astray. Methane? Now the problem is virtually non-existent.

If there is a single lesson in recent decades, it is that the cap and soil buffers are crucial. Englewood's two-inch layer of topsoil? California regulations, well ahead of the national guidelines, presently call for a minimum two-foot-thick compacted foundation soil layer; then a minimum one-foot layer of low-permeability soil; then a minimum one-foot vegetative cover soil layer. Greens are mounded above that, and any trees and brush -- shallow-root species such as olive and eucalyptus grow best -- are planted in hills built a bit higher.

"Under the present regulations these problems would not exist or crop up," Lee says. "The lesson we've learned is that anybody who does this should plan on spending a little more on construction to avoid paying later to fix mistakes."

If the course-a-day mantra continues, landfills may become the few remaining places available for construction. In fact, if the technology continues at its present pace, golf courses could become accepted as the final step of the solid waste management procedure.

Anyone who says otherwise is talking garbage.