Monday, March 14, 2005

Clint Eastwood vs. Environmentalists: Make My Day

Apparently the ownership group that controls the Pebble Beach Golf Co., which includes Pebble Beach, Spyglass, Spanish Bay and the various resort properties that goes along with it, is going head-to-head with a group of environmentalists over a proposed expansion.
The ownership group at Pebble includes Academy Award winning actor and director Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer, and Peter Uberroth, wants to build a new course and expand its resort, but California environmentalists, notorious for their zeal, are trying to block the plan.

The story can be found here, courtesy of USA Today.

It never fails to fascinate me that there is this old fashioned notion that golf courses are actually bad for the environment. At one time, given the various chemicals poured into a courses, this may have been true. But now most projects have to show that the water that flows off a course is actually cleaner than the water that went into it. In many cases, golf courses are actually good for an area -- adding green space to urban areas and getting people out of doors, away from television and computers.

That said, there will always be some tree huggers that have myopic views of golf course development and don't really see how the design and construction of these properties has evolved. I don't expect that to change, even if Clint points a gun at them and offers to have them, "Make my day."

1 Comments:

At 1:23 PM, Blogger Erik J. Barzeski said...

I agree that sometimes environmentalists take too strong a stance, and that golf courses do all they can to preserve and in fact add to nature.

But imagine 200 acres of wetland on a 250-acre property. There's nothing a golf course architect could do to preserve the wetlands by building a golf course. The wetlands are destroyed and there's not enough area to recreate them. Or a rare bird lives in the area in which they want to build. Or who knows what else...

Perhaps such a situation exists in Monterey.

 

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