Golf Guilt

I had this idea that golf courses were a benign use of land. They aren’t as highly manicured here as in the states, so I thought they’d be a carbon sink and possibly provide habitat.

When I played at Belvoir last week I noticed two things. A LOT of heavy machinery doing maintenance--reshaping greens and building new bunkers. So a lot of oil. Also, a lot of sand spread on the course, which improves soil porosity or something. Here’s a sand pile at another course near me, Castlereagh Hills.

I read recently about sand mafias. I already knew that large quantities of sand are illegally dredged from Lough Neagh, a unique ecosystem. But sand is also ruinously dredged from rivers, and entire beaches are stolen from unguarded islands by sand pirates. The rate of development in China, say, or the middle east has created an insatiable need for sand. It turns out plentiful sand in the desert is not as well suited to making cement as sand that’s under a river or lake or on a beach. The ecological destruction is on an unimaginable scale.

To add to this list of baddies, a friend told me that copper sulphate is used on greens to make them more green. Copper sulphate is highly toxic so I can only hope that is not what is making the greens green.

Today I played 18 holes on a par 3 course in Bangor. It was a lovely sunny autumn day and I really enjoyed being out on the course--while putting out of my mind what the true costs of maintaining the course might be.
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