Make golf course an organic one

Published 4:32 pm Sunday, October 27, 2013

Professional engineer Bill Lider suggests that the Lynnwood Golf Course be shut down. (Oct. 19 letter, “City needs to get out of the golf business”). It loses money, and the city squanders tens of thousands of dollars yearly treating it with pesticides and fungicides which are toxic and even carcinogenic.

It may be too late to save the course. However, if one last try is made, I would suggest that we make the golf course unique among courses in the area, that we make it an organic golf course. President Obama plays at Vineyard Golf Course in Martha’s Vineyard, which is a completely organic golf course. Regarding cost of maintenance, the course manager there says:

“The club’s maintenance labor budget is higher than those of most clubs its size, but … net costs were the same “because of the money we save on traditional pesticides, which are very expensive.”

If the course were advertised as organic, non-toxic and non-carcinogenic, golfers might come from far and wide to play on it. We would not be exposing golfers, neighbors, animals and fish to toxic chemicals and cancer they find at all other golf courses. And the course might turn a profit.

James Robert Deal

Lynnwood