Columbus, Ohio has a golf course built on a formerly closed land fill. The course represents one of the nation's more ambitious attempts to reclaim non-productive environmental space for recreational use. Used for decades as a landfill, it was bulging with trash when public officials decided in the late 1990s to top the waste with a 18 hole golf course.
The result? A unusual open, undulating course without trees that resembles the links courses found in Scotland. The course's name is appropiate for the reclaimation project and draws on Greek mythology. It is named the Phoenix Golf Links.
The Phoenix course offers stunning views of the Columbus skyline and is a great place to watch the city's 4th of July fireworks, known in Columbus as Red, White, and Boom. The course hosts a one day tournament on the 4 th , called the Firecracker Open, and everybody is encouraged to stick around for the fireworks.
However, the course soaks up half a million gallons a water every day during the summer. The water is pumped from a nearby gravel quarry.
And as the landfill settles, fairways and greens have to be re-contoured. The 14 th green sagged and was recently rebuilt. A big issue is the build up of methane gas underneath the course. Currently, pipes collect the methane and transfer it to a small station where it fuels generators and produces electricity sold to the grid.
The course's main challenge for golfers is its shifting winds. Its designer, Tim Nugent, has designed several other golf courses over landfills.
The 7300 yard New Castle golf links in Washington State,
built on a landfill (fair educational use)
Golf courses have also been built over rock quarries, strip mines, including coal mines, and Superfund cleanup sites. The US has approxiately 70 golf courses built on top of landfills. Course construction costs more, but returns idle assets to public use. Golf courses require very large tracts of land, and many closed landfills are simply not large enough for the 3,000 to 4,000 yard length needed for 18 hole courses (assuming the course has 9 pairs of parallel holes).
California leads the way with ten courses on former landfills; in the South, Florida has four, North Carolina, two; Virginia, one.
The public widely accepts courses built over converted landfills, and several courses have more than 40,000 rounds of annual play. A Phoenix, Arizona course-the city's most popular public course--exceeded 100,000 annual rounds and weekend bookings have to be made a year in advance!
Health hazards to players are nil and the benefits of converting the landfills have positive green results. One California course captures and siphons enough methane to produe electricity for 10,000 homes!
The fears of civil officials focus on run-off waters contaminated with chemical hazards and capping of the former landfills and the monitoring and testing for contimation levels is expensive. So far, either short term or long term, no significant problems with leaks have been identified at any of the US courses now in use.
Take heart: the next tee shot buried in the sand trap is a model of a larger environmental recovery. Good results can come from places where positive progress appears difficult or appreently impossible. Take comfort in knowing the green space for the game is being made from recycled brownfields.
Golf course construction on top of a landfill (fair educational use)
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