Report card has golf course moving in the right direction
Drew Donnelly got some good news from Sanibel.
City natural resources officials this month upgraded best management practices of the 152-acre Sanibel Island Golf Club that he co-owns with partner Ed Lockard. The rating of “partial compliance” with the city’s Golf Course and Lake Management recommendations are validation for two years of worker training, maintenance practices, irrigation, fertilizer reduction and landscape upgrades, Donnelly said.
The city this month issued a report card for the best practices at the island’s three golf courses; The Sanctuary Golf Club and the Dunes Golf & Tennis Club remained in full compliance for meeting or exceeding a checklist of items like reducing fertilizer uses, preventing fertilizers from entering surrounding waterways, limiting rain and irrigation runoff, adding buffered landscaping around lakes and waters to prevent runoff. The city’s best management and water quality checklist surveys some 15 categories.
Although partial compliance is like a “C” on a report card, it’s progress, Donnelly said. The city in 2012 issued “not in compliance” rating, the same year he and Lockard bought the 18-hole course.
“This is a big deal for us,” said Donnelly, the former teaching professional at the Sanctuary. “Right at the beginning, we wanted to move in the right direction.”
While anxious for golf managers to get their courses in alignment with best practices, the city understands full compliance gets expensive, said Holly Milbrandt with Sanibel’s Natural Resources division, the agency with oversight and issuing report cards. Plantings, irrigation upgrades and fertilizer reductions cost money, she said. The city, however, applauded Donnelly and Lockard for prioritizing the initial recommendations to improve the environmental health of the grounds.
“We recognize (these) are very different courses with different memberships,” Milbrandt said.