Pelican Hill golf courses focus on both kinds of green

Stephen Friedlander knows that golf courses, with their lush acreage of sprawling greenery, are often on the receiving end of the finger of blame from residents mourning the death of their front lawns.

With California facing one of the most severe and persisting droughts on record, residents and businesses like golf courses throughout the state are being asked to conserve. In Orange County, this means designated watering days and strict rules for slashing water use in most cities.

“Imagine how many people right now in a drought are asking why is that guy watering his grass with drinking water and my grass just went brown,” said Friedlander, the vice president of golf at Pelican Hill, which is owned by the Irvine Co. “That question is being asked all over the state of California right now.”

With their carpets of green grass, golf courses like Pelican Hill, which is nestled among the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Newport Coast, are the focus of some scrutiny. Golf courses throughout the state, including those that use recycled water, have recently grappled with reducing water use quickly to meet statewide demands.

But Friedlander said that just because Pelican Hill’s grass is green, it doesn’t mean they’re wasting water.

Both the Pelican Hill’s 18-hole golf courses are landscaped using recycled water, which has become more common in new golf course development over the years. Still, less than 40% of golf courses in California rely solely on non-drinking water to keep their grass green, statistics show.

Pelican Hill’s golf courses also have a few more bells and whistles to aid in conservation.

With just a touch of a button on a smart phone, golf course superintendents, who manage the nearly 400 acres of greenery, can water specific areas of grass anytime day or night.

If one area looks particularly dry, the superintendents will flip on the sprinkler head for a bit with the assurance that only the area that really needs a drink will receive one.

Employees use weather satellites, computers and smart phones to control 6,000 of the 11,000 sprinkler heads on the 36-hole course.

“One irrigation head can throw water near the fairway and the other irrigation head can throw water near the rough because the fairway might need less water than the rough depending on the weather, climate and the amount of traffic that’s been on the golf course,” he said.

Smart sprinkler heads are just one of several features that Friedlander said makes the course ahead of the curve in drought friendly technology.

In 2007, the resort closed its golf courses for two years allowing designer Tom Fazio to reconfigure the courses. In that time, the Irvine Co. installed a water management system that includes five underground cisterns that can hold 1.2 million gallons of rainwater and runoff. The captured water is recycled and used to irrigate the golf courses and surrounding landscape.

The resort also rebuilt two irrigation lakes to hold an additional 5.4 million gallons of rainwater and runoff, which can be used to water the courses.

Pelican Hill was one of 15 courses throughout the United States in 2009 that was recognized by Golf Digest’s Green Star Environmental Awards, which identifies environmental leaders in the sport.

In 2012, the course earned a spot in Golf Magazine’s Eco-friendly Green Hall of Fame.

Over the last few years, several acres of the course have been converted to Bermuda grass, which is drought and cold tolerant, meaning it requires less watering.

“It’s the right thing to do for the future,” Friedlander said of conservation. “Southern California is an arid climate, so when you live in an arid climate with an average rainfall of about 11 inches per year, that doesn’t give you enough water to keep a golf course alive. To tap into potable water is not environmentally sensitive and it’s not sustainable.”