The Indian Wells, Calif., club funded the project through anonymous member donations, and work on the front nine began in the summer of 2016. The project included a redesign of all green complexes, reworking the fairway bunkers, adding contouring to the greens, and converting 120,000 sq. ft. of turf to landscaping. Desert Horizons Country Club…

As with previous offers, clubs and courses in the Palm Springs, Calif. region are being offered a new round of $15,000 rebates for each acre of irrigated turf that is removed, with a cap of seven acres. “It is not about being in an emergency or reacting to the emergency,” said a water-district official in explaining the program’s continuation.

In a guest-opinion article published in The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, Calif., Jim Schmid, Superintendent of The Lakes CC in Palm Desert, Calif., explained the long-term importance of clubs’ involvement in conservation efforts, even as severe drought conditions have eased.

The draft regulations would require golf courses using private wells and other commercial properties relying on an “independent source of water supply” to limit irrigation to two days a week or achieve a 25 percent reduction in water use.

Through a state grant, the water district will offer cash rebates of up to $15,000 per acre (up to a maximum of seven acres per golf property) to encourage the area’s 123 golf courses to remove grass and replace it with desert landscaping.

The more than 120 golf courses in Southern California’s Coachella Valley have a rare luxury because of a huge underground aquifer that makes water cheap and plentiful, while other properties in the state must deal with a devastating drought. Superintendents still want to develop long-term conservation strategies, but pressure from residents, and in some case legal requirements, are forcing them to keep properties lush.

Following up on an agreement made last year, the Palm Desert, Calif., club has begun using recycled water for irrigation, reducing the pumping of groundwater from an aquifer that has been declining. The Berger Foundation loaned the water district more than $2.2 million to complete the pipeline that officials say expedited the project by two or three years.

The commitment was made at a meeting with officials of the region’s water district, “not as a response to the drought,” said the group’s spokesman, “[but as] a response to the whole notion of long-term sustainability.”

The Palm Springs Desert Sun’s request for information was denied, with the agencies citing “a constitutional right to privacy and an obligation to protect individual customer data.” Meanwhile, low groundwater levels forced wells to be shut at Maderas Golf Club.

The Director of Golf Course Operations from Rancho La Quinta CC and the Golf Course Superintendent of Toscana CC will be panelists at a community meeting, co-sponsored by the city of Indio, Calif. and The Desert Sun newspaper of Palm Springs, Calif., that is being held to encourage dialogue about water problems in the Coachella Valley and explore potential solutions.

A group of golf course managers and water district officials have formed the Coachella Valley Golf Industry Water Conservation Task Force, to focus on reducing the water footprint of the Southern California area’s 124 golf courses. In Poway, Calif., city council approved a conditional use permit to allow Maderas Golf Club to start pumping ground water from its wells after being forced to stop in 2011.

After the Coachella Valley Water District approved a new hookup for the course, the Troon Golf property in Palm Desert, Calif. has signed on to use a blend of recycled water and Colorado River water for its irrigation needs. Previously, it had pumped its water from a well.