While climate change is a very controversial issue everywhere, the Town of Amherst is grappling with it in planning changes for its golf courses.
Scientists say the world is getting warmer, wetter and wilder. Amherst has golf courses, with grass, trees and drainage — and some of the town courses already have serious drainage problems.
Supervisor Brian Kulpa said that's an issue in plans to keep the Audubon Golf Course at 18 holes and resolve drainage issues, fairly common in the town. Amherst is planning to spend $500,000 to start renovating the course and working on a plugged drain system.
Kulpa said that's not the only course with problems.
"It impacts Oakwood," he said. "Oakwood looks to be pretty wet and not something where we really want to do a ton of deforestation. In terms of what we're looking at up in Oakwood, that's certainly changed the conversation about what we will and will not be doing with that area."
Audubon will be getting solar panels to take over some of the electrical load and a lot more trees, after 200 are cut down this winter. That includes dead ash trees on the course.
Golf course operator Indigo said it has adopted new controls on chemical sprays as Integrated Pest Management. Indigo Golf Senior Vice President Mike Cutler said it's getting more careful about those chemicals and how they are used.
"There are types of heather that you can plant that the CO2 they take out and the exchange rate is about four times of an oak tree. It's amazing. A lot of people don't realize that," Cutler said. "There are things you can do with trees you plant, solar energy usage, and we do that over the course of time to make sure we are stewards of the environment and as environmentally responsible as we can be. And part of that is an Integrated Pest Management Program and your chemical program."
