NCSU Seeks Millions for Green Golf Course

By Wade Rawlins, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Jul. 13–In a departure from its normal mission, a state agency charged with improving water quality is considering N.C. State University’s request for $5.8 million to buy land in rural Tyrrell County for a golf course.

At the same time, legislation — backed by Senate leader Marc Basnight — would give the Clean Water Management Trust Fund’s directors more flexibility to fund innovative and demonstration projects. It could boost prospects for such projects, where benefits to water quality are difficult to predict.

Basnight, a Manteo Democrat, said in an interview Thursday that he sought the change in the trust fund’s charter to encourage its leaders to support more far-reaching projects to improve water quality and had no specific project in mind.

Basnight, whose district includes Tyrrell County, said he strongly supports buying the land. He said he backs the concept of a non-traditional golf course that would be a model for environmental protection and pollution reduction — features not typically associated with golf courses. He said N.C. State would have to raise money to build the course.

“Don’t picture this as a place for Marc Basnight to play golf,” Basnight said. “That would be wrong. It would be an experimental place, studying ways to not use herbicides and insecticides traditionally used in golf courses and to develop new grasses.”

But the project has raised eyebrows. Sen. Phil Berger, the Republican minority leader, said that such ideas cost citizens in the end.

“To ask the people to pay more money in taxes in order to fund a golf course, regardless of how environmentally friendly, is going to strike a lot of people as an inappropriate use of state money,” Berger said.

The trust fund, an independent state agency created in 1996 and funded by the legislature, gives $100 million a year in grants to protect and improve water quality and waterways. Grants are given out based on their merits for water quality protection. The fund typically buys land for buffers, contributes to park land purchases, and pays for projects to reduce stormwater runoff.

The request for $5.8 million, submitted last year, was accompanied by letters of support from NCSU Chancellor James Oblinger, Basnight and local officials. N.C. State leaders asked in September that it be deferred until this year so they could get an option on the land. The trust fund’s board is expected to consider the request in September.

Berger questioned why N.C. State couldn’t raise the money to buy the land as well as build the golf course.

“If people begin to see it as a way to funnel money into districts for special projects, I think the political support for the trust fund will erode,” he said. Berger said the trust fund’s money could be better spent helping communities improve outdated sewage treatment plants to avoid illegal discharges into waterways.

‘An ecological model’

The proposal calls for acquiring about 376 acres of farmland along the Albemarle Sound, adjacent to the Eastern 4-H Environmental Education Conference Center. It would restore former wetlands and establish 58 acres of greenways and buffers along waterways to prevent runoff. N.C. State would put conservation restrictions on 90 acres of forested property it owns along Bunton Creek. The long-range plan envisions an environmentally friendly research golf course for 4-H members and the public.

“We would bring in experts and build a nine-hole course that would keep the natural grasses in place, not use agricultural chemicals, and make it an ecological model,” said Marshall Stewart, leader of the state 4-H Youth Development Program, which is part of N.C. State’s Cooperative Extension. He said 4-H leaders were focused on acquiring the land before it was developed and would raise money privately to build the golf course.

The proposal says the course would have a large regional economic benefit as the only public course in Tyrrell, Hyde and mainland Dare counties. Many Eastern North Carolina counties are trying to promote themselves as tourism destinations, and private development is consuming vast swaths of waterfront property.

Stewart said there was not a cost estimate on the golf course or a construction timetable.

It would not be the only golf course under N.C. State’s management. This week, officials inaugurated an 18-hole golf course on 200 acres of NCSU’s Centennial Campus. The $11.6 million course was built with private donations and is meant to serve as a living laboratory for the university’s nationally recognized turfgrass research program.

David McNaught, senior policy analyst at Environmental Defense and former executive director of the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, said the trust fund was not created to acquire land for golf courses, but so that it might fund land acquisitions to restore wetlands and provide pollution buffers.

“There are far more imperative and important water quality projects that need to be conducted, in my opinion,” McNaught said.

Fostering innovation

The Senate approved the bill giving the trust fund’s directors more flexibility in May, and the House approved it Thursday. It returns to the Senate to be reconciled with minor changes made by the House.

Phil Baddour, chairman of the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, said the board had not taken a position on the legislation but didn’t think it would change the fund’s mission. He said the board typically provided money to acquire land for stream buffers. He declined to comment on the request for money for a golf course.

“In fairness to the project, I shouldn’t comment until I’ve seen their application,” Baddour said.

D.G. Martin, interim director of the trust fund, said the legislation, if approved, would give the board more confidence in handling requests for non-traditional projects and in taking more risk in awarding grants.

“It’s my impression that this is a Senate initiative to get the board to have a little more sense of doing non-traditional and innovative projects than they have done in the past,” Martin said.

Staff writer Wade Rawlins can be reached at 829-4528 or wade.rawlins@newsobserver.com.

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