Rain reminds golf course ownership about drainage issues

Rain water rushes alongside homes on the edge of the 18th hole at Cherry Hills Golf Course Thursday. Photo by Andy Abeles

By Doug Spoon, Editor

This week's rain showed once again one of the challenges facing new general manager Charlie Kong as he considers re-development plans for the closed North Golf Course and improvements to the Cherry Hills Golf Course.

As the rain intensified Thursday afternoon, water rushed south through both courses -- not only through cement channels designed for that purpose, but also on hard dirt areas outside the rough and in back of adjacent homes. Kong and his consultant, Grant Becklund, acknowledge that no matter what they do with the property, it must continue to serve as a drainage route into the Salt Creek.

Because of that, Becklund has met with city engineer Jonathan Smith about the impact golf course drainage and possible erosion might have on water quality, which is closely monitored not only by the city, but by the county.

"The basic premise is, the golf course ends up being a collection point for everything else around it," Becklund said in an interview last week. "All these developed areas around the course, their roadside trash is being collected in these concrete channels. That flushes onto the golf course.

"I'd like to talk to the water quality board to see what concerns they might have. Jonathan has told me they are monitoring many areas in the city for water quality."

Kong and Becklund have been soliciting public input and working together to come up with ideas to re-develop the North Course, which was closed by Golf and Art LLC almost two years ago, just a few months after purchasing it. Ideas discussed have included re-opening the property as a golf school, perhaps with a senior care facility and park space. But regardless of the design, county flood control regulations dictate that water flow through the area must be as efficient as possible, with minimal sediment collection in Salt Creek beyond the south end of the Cherry Hills Course.

Becklund said that he believes the downward slope of the courses heading toward Salt Creek is minimal enough to reduce the effects of erosion.

"The course is a big wide swath and down the middle is the flood plain," Becklund said. "The flood plain is maybe 20 percent of the project, and the ground is fairly flat. The golf course is 8,000 feet long, and it only drops 18 feet in that 8,000 feet. The slope is so flat that water doesn’t really flow that strong.

"You wouldn’t really generate erosion. But what happens is, it ends up being an 8,000-foot-long water quality feature. The golf course actually is treating the entire community’s water because the growth there feeds into the water supply. Even areas that were never turfed, what we call the rough, do not have any slope to them. The water pretty much soaks into the ground."

Not in times of hard rainfall, however, as local resident Andy Abeles witnessed Thursday when rain water rushed past the back of his home along the 18th hole of Cherry Hills Golf Course and south toward Salt Creek. Conditions such as these are what Becklund and Kong must consider as they evaluate the property's potential.

"Basically, drainage runs through the beginning of the course, north of Chambers Avenue,” Smith said in a recent interview, referring to a long, curving flood control channel that runs southwest from Bradley Road through a residential community and dumps into the north part of the golf course property after running under Chambers Avenue.

“There are additional flows entering the course from the ‘Sun City Channels’ (other flood control channels running east-west into the course). The flow runs south and enters a flood facility south of the course at Ridgemoor before entering Salt Creek.

“There are concerns that due to the dead vegetation, silt will build up in the flood facility.”

Becklund said that recent landscaping improvements on both golf courses will help in that regard.

"There was a list of things the city asked for," Becklund said about city officials, who have issued multiple citations concerning the condition of the property. "We have landscaping plans to replace the trees that died. There’s like 140 trees that have died and have been removed or cut down. We gave the city a first plan check for a plan to replace all those trees."