Moon Valley Golf Course to Stop Irrigating with Drinking Water
[From AZCentral.com]
(photo: azcentral sports)
Most golf courses across the country have started to use non-potable, untreated water to maintain their green lawns. But there are a handful of courses in Phoenix still watering with drinking water.
The privately owned Moon Valley Country Club and Pointe Tapatio Lookout Mountain Golf Club have both been using drinking water since they were developed almost 60 years ago. But that will soon change.
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Potable water treatment isn’t cheap. Tom McDonald, an attorney from Gammage & Burnham who has worked with Moon Valley to get off of potable water, said the Moon Valley community went through a bankruptcy a few years ago due largely in part to the high cost of water.
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“The water is coming from a Salt River Project and Central Arizona Project canal, part of the city’s access supply for tap water,” McDonald said. “It’s water that the city wouldn’t find usable, so we’re building a line to get to that canal.”
McDonald said this pipeline will drastically lower the cost of water for the course and will help the city as a whole. When the community had to file bankruptcy, he said water bills were nearing $1 million a year. With this new pipeline, they anticipate the annual water bills to be somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000.
“It’s really going to help all of these communities,” he said. “It’s something that the neighbors have supported. It’s a true public-private partnership.”
See the full story on AZ Central.
