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Helpful or unhealthful? Proposed pond has become a battleground
(by Jenny Fisher - September 16, 2009)
With a driving range lit by floodlights until 9:30 p.m., a 26-acre hardwood forest adjacent and homes on three sides, University City’s Ruth Park Golf Course can be a battleground for the competing interests of golfers, neighbors, environmentalists and city officials.
Now, a plan to address the course’s longstanding drainage problem by building a storm water pond by hole eight has some council members and citizens saying the city is constructing an eyesore and a health hazard that won’t really solve the problem.
Council member L. Michael Glickert, the only golfer on the council, has been the most vocal opponent of the plan. Along with council member Lynn Ricci, he voted against approving the Parks Department’s plan at a special council meeting Sept. 8.
“Now we’re going to have to worry about larvae, and the juvenile state of mosquitoes,” Glickert said. “I think there’s a health concern.”
He also said the water might bring in geese, an added nuisance for golfers and something parks maintenance personnel would have to deal with. And, he said, “when the water subsides and goes down in the pond, we’re going to get an odor that is rather offensive, and that’s an area where the golfers are walking.”
At a city council meeting Aug. 31, resident William Field also voiced his opposition to the plan. “The manner in which this pond encroaches onto the two fairways is awkward and damages the aesthetic features,” he said. “To put it in the vernacular, this is going to be plain ugly.”
Describing the storm water pond as “yet another intrusion on the golf course creating yet another set of problems,” Field cited many of the same concerns as Glickert. He suggested stone-lined swales as a better-suited, more-attractive solution.
But Parks Department Director Nancy MacCartney said swales would be washed out by the amount of rain coming down the 17-acre slope next to hole eight, while the planned 71-foot-wide, 7-foot-deep pond would hold large amounts of water and allow it to slowly dissipate, she said. Glickert’s suggestion of riprap, or stone piles designed to decrease erosion, would not slow the water down effectively, she said. The ultimate goal, she said, is to protect Ruth Park Woods and prevent contaminants from entering the branch of River Des Peres running through the forest. The pond will have landscaping and native plantings approved by the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District and by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
Drainage on the nearly 80-year-old golf course has long been a problem because of the area’s sloping topography. Council member Glickert said he thought runoff issues had been exacerbated because a formerly high, wooded area was cleared to make way for the driving range. But MacCartney said the Parks Department had a hydraulic engineer study the driving range to show that the impact was minimal.
“We still have the same 17 acres of slopes; it’s still all grassed-in,” she said. “In fact, we improved the drainage in the range itself.”
The storm water pond would be paid for by an Environmental Protection Agency grant for watershed protection projects, distributed through MoDNR. According to MacCartney, the grant would cover the $108,500 cost of constructing the pond, and the city would provide personnel to administer the project and to maintain it once it is completed. She said she expects it to be finished this fall.
Council member Byron Price said he voted to approve the project because he believed MacCartney knew what she was doing, as evidenced by his impression that the driving range, completed in October 2008, had been a financial success. When the driving range was being built, he said, “people thought the sky was falling.” But, he said, “all it has done is brought in money.”
MacCartney said that for the current fiscal year, the golf course had expenses of $577,018 and revenues of $600,000. Before that, she said, the golf course had been running a deficit since 1999.
“The driving range has saved the golf course,” she said. Since October 2008, when the driving range opened, through this August, the golf course had $620,377 in revenue, MacCartney said. Comparing the same time period from October 2007 to August 2008, revenue was $359,976, with the driving range accounting for $128,688 of that increase.
Though the driving range seems to have been a fiscal boon to the city, not everyone is happy. Nearby residents like Nathaniel Crump, who came to speak at the Aug. 31 meeting, say they have to deal with the sound of golf balls being hit all day, the lights on the driving range from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., litter, increased traffic and people parking where they’re not supposed to.
“There’s no longer a concern that you’re going to put a driving range in — it’s already in — but we’d just simply like to see you enforce the rules,” said Crump, who is a golfer himself. But, he added, “I really hope they make some money on the thing.”
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