Another week of warm weather and a lack of rain until yesterdays small rain event. A broken record at this point and one that is a constant reminder of the challenges we faced last year and by the looks of it this year as well. As our weather pattern continues to be dry we are trying to make the best use of our limited water supply. During normal winters we get enough rain that we don’t need to water, but recent years has seen a shift that has left us with some extended dry periods that requires some watering. We’ve seen warm stretches where we had highs in the 70º’s again this week and we also saw some colder mornings with a low last week of 23º! Cold mornings and warmer days are a result of a lack of rain and cloud cover.
Updated rain information after yesterdays rain event; hard to see but we are in a record dry period and you can see that the other record dry spell in 2019-20 in red for the same time frame just not as long.
At a recent MMWD Board meeting changes were made to how we are able to purchase and use water. There had been in place restrictions to winter watering that limited our ability to purchase water until our billing cycle started on March 18th. A recent repeal of Ordinance 455 that held us to those restrictions meant that we needed to file for another variance to allow us to purchase water and irrigate fairways starting on February 18th. We made the argument that we would use less water to keep our fairways alive now than if we had to let our fairways go dormant. Had we not been allowed to water fairways and fairways had gone dormant we would’ve needed to double the amount of water to come out of dormancy when conditions required more water than we are currently using. In keeping the fairways alive, we are managing our water as close as we can to make our water last as long as possible until the next billing cycle starts with a new allotment. Current weather had been helping to reduce our need to water, but some warmer temps forced our hand and the need for more water use. Yesterdays rain helps, even at .14”, its the cooler weather that will help us as long as we can stay in the low to mid 60’s. Fingers crossed!
Chart represents MMWD information from Water Watch. Rain totals are from Lake Lagunitas rain gauge. It is easy to note that we are going down in water storage with it being held up by water coming from Sonoma Water.
In the meantime, we have continued to seed fairways around the course that are still thin and in need of a good stand of grass. Once warmer temperatures return we should see areas fill in as grass seed germinates and we will push with fertilizer applications. As most of you have noticed we have a pretty decent population of weeds in our fairways and roughs. We do not make wide spread applications of pesticides on the golf course during the winter months. We will treat these areas once we are certain we are through the rain season later this spring and water from our pond is no longer flowing over the spillway into Bullfrog Creeks. This is done to remove any potential pesticide run off that could get into our lake and then downstream into Alpine reservoir.
The following information deals with our rain totals for the golf course and the latest information from MMWD as to the current storage of their seven reservoirs. MMWD is still holding tight to water as they are using as much water from Sonoma to reduce their pull from the reservoirs helping to keep their levels as high as they can as long as they have access to the water from Sonoma. The MMWD board is slowly removing restrictions trying to show that conservation efforts are still needed to make sure we are all managing our water use given our current stretch of dry weather.
Latest update on rain totals and hopefully we can add a little more rain to the total from a small cell that is supposed to roll in around 3am on Saturday morning.
I don’t normally complain about rain, but we need to see more rain than what we’ve seen as it challenges us to follow the current water restrictions to not water after rain events for 48 hours. Lower temps and less wind will help reduce our water needs as well.
After a dry stretch of 16 days we’ve received some small amounts of rain and some days with heavy fog. Initial long range forecasts for December had shown a drier than average month, but we are now tracking a nice series of rain events starting on Dec 11th. So far forecasts are calling for seven inches of rain over a six day period. This will allow for some nice runoff that will go a long way towards adding to MMWD’s reservoirs MMWD has been managing water rather well by buying water from Sonoma to help keep as much water in the reservoirs as possible. This can be seen in the following graph as the reservoir level has held steady as the water use by its customers increases with the recent dry period. Here is a chart from the MMWD website MMWD Water Watch where customers can go to see how much water is being used, where the water is coming from, and compare that with previous years.
One can see that the early rain in October is still helping us to reduce water use as compared to last year.
This graph below combines the annual rainfall at Lake Lagunitas with the storage capacity of MMWD’s six reservoirs. I have updated it to show the actual acre-feet of water instead of the percentage that MMWD tabulates in their charts on the Water Watch website. One can see how much impact the storm from October had on the reservoirs and we would be in a much worse place had that rain event not happened. We have all but caught up to where we were last year, but that still puts us just over 8,254 acre feet of water from what we have on average for Dec 9th. which is 2.68 billion gallons of water! For some comparison the October storm took us from 25,716 acre-feet to 45,854 acre-feet at our max and raised the MMWD reservoirs by 6.56 billion gallons!! Its going to take a lot of water to keep increasing our reservoir totals, but we do have our wettest months historically to look forward too!
Crossing our fingers that we will get a good amount of rain from this storm and that there will be more rain behind it. We still have a lot of ground to make up and need some big rain events to keep getting the reservoir closer to capacity. The more rain we can get in the reservoirs the less stringent the call for reductions in next years water use! So, be sure to keep the rain dances going and save all the you can with your water use at home!
Dormant areas have recovered with seeding and the early rains in October. We are currently seeding the course prior to the next rain event starting this weekend.
After a very wet start to the winter we are now seeing the high pressure ridge pushing rain north all the way into British Columbia! Current forecasts shows this weather pattern holding for the foreseeable future, so more drought and potential frosty mornings and warm afternoons. After 16 days we finally got some more rain this week and the forecast for rain has improved greatly in the short term with rain starting Saturday night! We could expect up to 4-6″ of rain that will go along way to filling our reservoirs!!
This is the long range forecast for the United States through December. Its hard not to miss the concern for the potential lack of rain into next year in the western states.
Historically, we use very little water through our winter months, even during the last two years where we have received less than average rain. This is large part to sun angle, cooler temps, and shorter days. An average day for us right now is in the mid sixty degrees for a high giving us an ET(evapotranspiration is the water lost to evaporation from a surface and transpiration in plants in a given day) of between .05-.08” a day. Take an average day in July and we can see an ET of .28” it would take us close to 6 days to get to that same range with what we are seeing with our current daily ET’s! Couple that with an adequate moisture in our soils and we can keep from watering for a longer period of time. The one exception is with the dormant areas on the course that are growing back from dormant plants and from seed. These areas still have some exposed soil and have dried down quicker that the areas that we maintained through the summer. These areas have been irrigated twice, once on Nov. 26th and again on Dec 1st, and as a whole, the rest of the course hasn’t been watered since October 15th.
Ready to see our rain totals kick up some more with the next storm rolling in!
As of the first of December, we are meeting the restrictions on the purchase of water by the Marin Municipal Water District. We do have access to our water in the lake on fourteen and in our wells that are located on the hill above the first fairway. Historically, our winters allow for enough rain but, we have relied primarily on the water in our pond to meet our watering needs when rain comes up short.
We filed a variance with MMWD that has been granted allowing us to water to meet our business needs, look after our assets, and help retain our employees. We will be able to start purchasing water in March and continue through the end of May. This is when we historically buy water and the allotment that has been determined is based on the most recent three year average for water use. Starting in March with a 15% allotment, April will be at 17%, and May will be at 20%. As the forecast looks rather dire at the moment, MMWD is looking at holding onto as much water as they can. The rain in October allowed for a huge recovery for so early in our rain season, but we are seeing the reservoirs start to show water use exceeding what is coming into the reservoir as run-off. MMWD has been purchasing water from Sonoma to help keep as much water in the reservoirs for as long as possible. There is a lot of things going on in the background, both by MMWD and by how we are able to use water here at Meadow Club.
These numbers are provided by MMWD on their website, rain is from their gauge at Lake Lagunitas and the reservoir totals are updated on a daily basis.
There is one thing we do more than anything on the course and that is our management of water: through irrigation, monitoring for wet/dry areas, proper drainage, and meeting regulatory requirements. We’ve searched for water on our property and have dry test wells scattered around the property. Our last effort in 2014-15 after an electromagnetic assessment of the property identified two possible locations, but they both came up dry.
Another aspect that gets raised is our water rights as property owners. For the first fifty years Meadow Club leased the property from MMWD who retained the water rights given that they owned the land. In 1976-77 with the land swap for land that now makes up most of the Kent Lake area, while the club took ownership of the golf course property, MMWD still held onto the water rights. We are currently limited to storage of water in our lake and have to meet state water regulations as to our water use while water is still coming onto the course via our creeks. If we use water while the creeks are still running we are obligated to release the same amount of water down stream from our lake.
Seeder will be busy for the next couple of days!
Meadow Club is a special place, much in part due to our setting on Mt Tamalpais. With our location comes challenges when looking at other water options with which to water the course. While we have access to water from MMWD, obtaining a secure source of reclaimed water four our course poses a number of challenges. Right now it is easier and far cheaper for MMWD to get reclaimed water to Peacock Gap than it is to do the same for Meadow Club. Regardless, we need to look into our best options going forward. A select committee is currently working to determine the feasibility of acquiring reclaimed water that would greatly reduce water restrictions in the future. This is not the first time this idea has been considered. In the early 1990’s a previous committee looked into the options of getting reclaimed water to Meadow Club. I’m still looking into what they determined, but by the late 1990’s we had some rather wet years that may have played a part in tabling a search for an alternate water source.
Drone imagery showing the course recover since the rain in October and we’ve come along way since November 15th!
In writing this over the last couple of days I’ve looked at the forecast for the next ten days and it changes by the hour! There is more talk of rain re-entering our forecast and it can’t come fast enough. In the meantime, we will continue to look after our water use and the recovery of our seeded areas on the course. Heavy rain events are preferred as they have the best influence on the recovery of the reservoirs, but if all we get is small rain events we just need the rain to come down before we need to irrigate the course!
With the end of June and most of July to this point we have experienced a cool period that has helped reduce our water use. Now that we have dialed in our number of heads we identified 40 heads that could be turned back on. These heads are found on the par five holes and can be seen on 1/13/15 quite easily now. The response on the first hole has been slower and we will continue to monitor that.
In talking with David Sexton, we determined that we can turn on an additional 50 heads and those were turned back on July 12th. Fairways were extended further back to the tees on the sixth, ninth and seventeenth holes respectively. We are constantly evaluating our water use and efficiency and will work towards turning on more heads in the coming months and still manage our water to meet the MMWD 40% reduction.
With these fairways being turned on the fairway bunkers on those holes are now being watered and already providing a firmer surface. We have now turned on individual heads on the remaining fairways to improve their playability and look after the grasses on the bunker rims.
Bermuda seed head on the fourth fairway getting mowed
As we continue to move through the summer we will turn on selected heads as we get through the warmer months of the year. We have a test going to verify how responsive the grass is to recovering when water is available. Right now, the rye grass is the majority of the grass that we are seeing green up. The slowest to recover will be the Poa and we hope to see some results soon.
We are planning for the worst and will go from there. If the Poa is in fact dead, we will need to seed these areas. As with most things right now there is a seed shortage and most of our vendors are running low on seed, or don’t have any at all! I managed to find four pallets of seed and will have them delivered on the 19th. In the meantime, we had to get a shipping container as we don’t have a good place to store this much seed. We already have a rat problem and having this much seed in our shop or fertilizer building poses a number of issues.
The seed shortage is due to pandemic demand — more residential use and some mergers of seed suppliers have bought up more seed for homeowner use. There has also been some yield reductions in seed production that has drawn down the availability of seed by 30%. We are on a wait list for seed when the next batch of seed is available in late August to September. We have also started seeding the fairways that have been returned to being irrigated.
A repair was made here earlier this year and has dried out even more than normal
Water continues to be a hot topic and have I posed some of the questions that I have heard from members
Why are we under water restrictions when most other Bay Area courses are not?
Our water supply for the majority of Marin is from Marin Municipal Water District and 75% of that water comes from rain with the other 25% of water coming from the Russian River. MMWD relies almost entirely on rainfall to meet their water needs, so with a drought of this magnitude we are at the mercy of mother nature. The drought is also affecting Sonoma County’s water supply from the Russian River posing even more issues with water availability for MMWD.
Why are Stone Tree, Marin Golf&CC, and McGinnis not under water restrictions?
Marin and Stone Tree have the benefit of using recycled water from North Marin Water District which is not under restricted use. Location has a lot to do with the availability of using recycled water and each of these courses are located very close to the treatment plants. McGinnis gets its recycled water from Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District which is adjacent to their property. LGVSD is in the process of increasing their treated water to over 5 million gallons a day, but as of yet it has a very limited infrastructure to get that water to end users. There are a number of schools, apartment complexes, and business opportunities to utilize that water at a more cost effective way before they would consider Meadow Club which is at least 11 miles away if they were to utilize end users along the way. Current estimates that a pipe line installation is close to $1.5 million dollars a mile and that likely doesn’t factor in the need to pump that water all the way up to MC.
Are there other options for water that won’t require us to reduce our water use?
Most golf courses in California use reclaimed water, the ones that don’t have issues that are similar to ours in that treatment plants are too far away, or they don’t have any treatment plants nearby. There are other courses that have found some innovative solutions such as having raw sewage piped onto their property where it is treated and the water used to irrigate the golf course. I am aware of two courses in the Bay Area that have looked into this; the first one is still working on permitting and planning stages for what feels like the last 10 years, while the other one started the process and has a fully operational sewage treatment plant in less than four years.
Is something like this feasible for Meadow Club?
Our biggest hurdle is our location and the elevation that water/sewage would need to be pumped up to Meadow Club. Figuring out the costs, working with local municipalities, water/sewage districts, and the State Water Resource Control Board poses a lot of challenges, but all of this needs to be addressed if we want to avoid future restrictions on our water use.
What is being done in the meantime?
We manage our water very closely and have incorporated a number of programs and monitoring to know how much water we apply and how efficient we are applying it. We use wetting agents that helps to hold water in our soil for plants to take up and have used mulch at the club to hold moisture in our landscaping. We have been working with the USGA, UC—Riverside, and Texas A&M trying to find grasses that could perform well in Northern California by offering green grass throughout the year while also reducing our overall water use. It is a long process before this is available for sod production and we are hearing that these new Bermudas are still 2 years away.
Finding the right Bermuda grass is key for using less water and providing the best playing conditions possible
If we had an unlimited water supply do we still need to consider Bermuda grass?
Water availability is not our biggest challenge! That seems to be contradictory to our current drought and water use restrictions, but hear me out. Our water use is driven by our need to provide firm and fast conditions—this is made harder by cool season grasses that struggle during our warmer summer months. Returning enough water to the cool season grasses means we need to apply a lot of water which challenges our ability to have firm playing conditions. Bermuda grass on the other hand uses anywhere from 20-40% less water for this same period of time. Not only does Bermuda reduce our water use it also reduces our mowing and fertilizer use throughout the year.
How long will it take for the turf to come back?
During long stretches of dry weather, grass will shut down and go dormant waiting for the rain to return. As we turn the water back on it will take some time for all the grass to come back. Ryegrass is the quickest to recover and as we have turned water back on at 1/13/15 it has greened up first. We saw the change in about four days and it has only continued to get better. The Bent and Bermuda is coming back a little slower and the Poa has not shown much improvement. Poa as a short rooted grass is more susceptible the challenges of dormancy.
For some perspective on how widespread our current drought is affecting the West.
What is going to happen if some grass doesn’t come back?
As mentioned above, some grass may not come back, largely the Poa. We have ordered some Rye grass seed, but there is currently a shortage and we were limited amount available to us. More rye seed will be available this fall and we are on a long list to get the seed as soon as it is available. Moving forward this will help to accelerate our current efforts to over seed the course with rye grass. Having more rye means the fairways will have a more uniform turf improving irrigation coverage and providing a firm playing surface. We also just started the first of three applications of herbicide to reduce the Bermuda population on the golf course with a focus on bunker rims and fairways. As with any chemical application we are following herbicide labeled rates for best results. This Bermuda, often referred to as Common Bermuda is a not as refined as the newer hybrid varieties that exhibit a finer leaf blade and denser turf better suited to golf courses. Common Bermuda puts out a lot more seed heads as you would have noticed on the fourth hole before we mowed it.
When will we be able to turn the water back on?
We continue to keep a close eye on our water use and during our current drought and water restrictions we have doubled down on our efforts. We initially turned off a number of heads trying to get to a 40% reduction. As we did, we noted that we would not meet the initial 40% reduction and had to turn off an additional number of heads to get us to the 40% knowing that we had to turn off more to get to the reduction number as we had fallen behind. One of the challenges is we are trying to meet our reductions with a lot of moving parts that need to be considered. Seasonal changes with the angle of the sun being a big driver in how high our Et(Evaporation and transpiration calculated by our irrigation computer and weather station) gets. In recent years we have seen our Et’s increase with warmer temperatures and lower humidity requiring more water to return to the grass.
Our efficiently numbers have continued to improve with the cooler temps that we just turned on another 50 heads on 6/9/17 fairways. As we continue to meet the water reduction needs from MMWD we will continue to look at turning more heads in the future.
Why don’t we just water the fairways less as a whole instead of watering the smaller portions in front of the greens?
We are currently following protocols from when we had water reductions in the past, most recently in 2014. When we turned off those areas we saw similar results to what we are seeing now and had all those dormant areas come back with the rain in the fall. As with previous years, I reached out to a couple of other Superintendents in the area that have dealt with similar water restrictions. Pasatiempo did an overall reduction for the fairways and roughs and found that most of the grass was dormant by the fall. In hindsight they would save that water and instead look after more turf and let large areas go dormant, similar to what we are doing at Meadow Club. Our temperatures are warmer here compared to their coastal climate, so the grass would go dormant here even faster.
On another note, there was some consideration for golfers with health concerns that would be limited to cart paths. Having areas in front of the greens for golfers to play the course as 18 par three holes. Also considered was the idea of having landing areas in the fairways as maintained turf. This is subjective as there is a very wide spread in distance amongst members and some group of golfers would be left out, not on purpose, but due to size of the area we can irrigate. By having the areas in front of the greens maintained the greatest number of members would benefit.
Mike DeVries during his recent visit on the course with Alison Hess, Green Chairman
Are the greens and aprons softer than normal?
We monitor the moisture content of our maintained areas and they are within our range for playability. The feeling that they are softer is largely due to the contrast of walking from the dormant areas that are much firmer due the lack of actively growing turf.
In recent days we started to notice our salt numbers getting high for this time of year, normally we don’t see these type of numbers until around October. Higher salt numbers poses some challenges with firmness, but with corrective application of calcium and some leaching of the greens we will see the greens firm up some. We are getting our water tested to see if there are any concern with its quality. Usually there is a nice turn around on our water, but with the lack of rain it could be seeing higher concentrations of what is normally found in the water. Once we get our results we will look at taking any corrective steps as needed.
Where does our water come from?
Our source for raw water is straight from the Bon Tempe reservoir roughly a half mile from the club. The actual pipe can be seen in a couple places along Bullfrog Creek trail.This has been our source of water since the reservoir was built in 1954. Before Bon Tempe, our water was coming from Swede George Creek with a pipe that is still visible on Kent Trail that runs along Alpine Reservoir. We are the only MMWD customer that uses raw water and this is due to our location on the mountain above the treatment plant.
How are we doing meeting the MMWD water restrictions goal of a 40% reduction?
As already mentioned we are doing a lot of adjusting to get the right number of heads off to meet the water restrictions. Each month we use a different amount of water with June, July, and August being our heaviest months for water use and in turn our biggest months for reductions. So far, a cooler summer has helped us meet our goals, but there is always a period of heat that will challenge us.As with everything we do, we learning things about the golf course and take the opportunity to improve the course and our management practices. One example is that we are able to see the drain lines on the course as these areas have dried out first and we have mapped them out and found out just how much drainage we have on the course.
This is a chart that we send to MMWD to show our water use for each billing cycle.
Rain used to be a fact of life up here on Mt. Tam! I can recall months where we had rain most days and nobody on the course. That’s what makes the last two years all the more interesting and I’m not even referring to the challenges with Covid! When you can take the last two years of rain totals and not even have their total meet the average for one year we should all be nervous. You will find below a graph that I tweet out to keep members up to date on our rain totals. We are trending into less rain for the last three years and some changes in weather patterns. We have been experiencing warmer temperatures for the last 10 years with new records being set each year at an alarming rate. Foggy mornings are all but a memory, replaced with frost and frost delays that are a result of less cloud cover. Jus this year we had 31 frost delays, which is record with a normal year being closer to 15 days!
Things are swinging away from what we are used to seeing at the club and we have been making plans to address them. This last year while working on our budget for 2021, it was determined that we should look into applying wetting agents and plant protectants on the course earlier in the year anticipating our current conditions. Wetting agents act to make water wetter and hold water in the soil and more available to the grass plant. We’ve already made two applications of wetting agents and feel good about the results thus far. In the coming weeks we will start putting our fairway fertilizer and plant protectants out and we will have a strong turf ready to handle the day to day weather challenges and increase in play during these Covid times.
Annual rain totals for MMWD dating back to 1879 shows the randomness of the rain totals yet some patterns can be seen
As we move into April, we will hear from Marin Municipal Water District(MMWD) about how they plan on reacting to our current drought and the management of water stored in their reservoirs. Here is a quote from a newspaper article from February of this year that lays out some early thoughts on how MMWD would proceed:
“Normally, the district’s water shortage protocols would have it wait until April 1 to decide whether to enact voluntary or mandatory conservation measures, depending on the water supply. If reservoir levels fall below 50,000 acre-feet, the plan calls for a 10% voluntary reduction to be made. If the supply falls below 40,000 acre-feet, a 25% mandatory reduction target can be put into effect. If water levels are projected to be below 30,000 acre-feet by Dec. 1, the district can enact up to a 50% reduction target.”
As of today, March 30th the total for all the reservoirs is 43,357 so things look good for at least a 10% reduction. Looking at current weather trends they may consider more than just the 10% reduction. For those interested we should hear something on April 6th when MMWD has a Board meeting. You can get information on the agenda and a link to the Livestream here if you are interested in following along Link to April 6th MMWD Board Meeting 7:30PM
Easy to see the effects of a lackluster rain season! This information can be found here and is updated regularly.
This is not our first time dealing with water restrictions due to drought conditions. Most of you will recall 2014-15 when we did a similar water reduction by turning irrigation off on the golf course. I know that in 1943 there was water reductions mandated and only tees, landing areas, and greens were irrigated. In 1975-76 there was water restrictions and Ray Leach set a course record of 60 when the club had to turn off irrigation over large parts of the course.
Our current plan is to follow the 10% reduction and turn off the necessary heads. We are still waiting to hear how MMWD will determine how we calculate our reduction, most likely based on a years total of purchased water from MMWD. In the meantime, we have already selected areas on the course to turn off. We don’t want to water something now if we know we are going to turn that area off for the rest of the year! We started by identifying areas out of play for most all members. The first and most obvious area is the driving range fairway followed by the areas between 3&4 that we are naturalizing this year. These two areas alone accounted for 40% of the heads that we need to turf off. Other areas identified are the beginning of fairways and areas that are largely out of play for the majority of our members. Consideration was also given for visibility from Bolinas Road, fire roads, and trails. As a golf course we are an easy target for criticism in regards to water use, so by having our water reduction efforts visible to the general public they can see that we are doing our part to conserve water.
This is our preliminary effort to meet a 10% reduction the brown areas represent what has already been turned off as of 3/31/21.
We will continue to update members on our progress and answer any questions you may have. In the meantime, lets all hope that we can squeeze in a little more rain before summer and fire season starts!
Meadow Club Grounds 