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| OHCC LIVING | AUGUST 2021 | 7 Golf Course Renovation & Well Conversion Report By Don Lopez, Golf Course Irrigation Committee Chairman The best practice for irrigation in the golf course industry in California, has evolved to the storage lake method over the last few years. The direct irrigation method has been replaced because the lake method is more efficient. It has always been possible to go direct out of a well, but it is no longer considered a prudent practice. It is difficult to keep a golf course green in the summer, in California, by trying to pump that much volume out of the well during the limited irrigating window. We have a few residents who read some information on the internet about irrigating agricultural crops and assumed that it might apply. We re-examined all the details that needed to be considered to irrigate direct from our well without a storage lake. We found that it would be far more complex and would require from six months to 24 months to obtain the necessary approvals from the City of Oceanside, Department of Drinking Water, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. That could delay completion of the golf course into late 2023. That is only if they gave us an approval, which is not a sure thing. The increased construction costs were prohibitive and would be many times more than any imagined savings. The City of Oceanside is extremely careful about cross contamination of our potable water, justifiably so, that is why it requires so many agency reviews. If we did all of that, and paid the hundreds of thousands of dollars to change systems, we would then have an old fashioned irrigation system that is no longer used for California golf courses. We do not need all of those agency approvals for the lake, because the lake does not connect potable water lines into the well water lines, so there is no danger of cross contamination of our water lines. During our re-examination of the irrigation methods, all of the experts in the golf course industry, that we contacted, vehemently reaffirmed that the lake was by far the most efficient method of irrigation. I interviewed the only golf course superintendent we could find currently using the direct method. He told me his greens turn brown in the summer and he burned up his pump trying to keep them irrigated. The pump was supposed to last 10 years, but his barely lasted five years. He has to pump from several hundred feet down in the well, and still pressurize the irrigation lines, and he just cannot do it. He told us to "definitely use a lake, if at all possible." We eliminated the tank as a storage option in 2017. We questioned our two engineers who we were interviewing to help us with drilling our well, asking them if it was possible to use a tank as our storage method. They explained the various reasons a tank would not work, so we eliminated it as an option. In 2018, the Board wanted to irrigate directly from the well. Maureen Huitt, our OHCC Landscape Director at the time, did a study of the pros and cons of direct irrigation. The results were mostly negative, so they eliminated that as an option. In 2019, when I re-joined the Board and assumed the Chair of the Golf Course Renovation Committee, we accepted the work of the last two years and began studying the advantages of the storage lake as the preferred irrigation method. It is a fundamental element of good Board and committee work to build upon the prior year's work. It is counter-productive to start over each time a new member is elected to the Board. We did that recently when we re-examined the direct irrigation option, and it cost us some design time and increased material prices. The result of that re-examination was that we established, once again, the storage lake is the most efficient irrigation method to keep a golf course green in California in the summer. There is very little profit to be had by "re-plowing the same old ground." We are proceeding now, as rapidly as practical, to finish the golf course renovation, build the lake, and convert the well just as 85 percent of you voted to do. We thank for your overwhelming support for this critical project. I will share the design for the lake when it is completed. I have seen a couple versions so far, but not the final one. There is a detailed construction schedule on the website under the tab Golf Course Renovation Project, which is being kept current.

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