Golf course "hazard" filters runoff pollution.

• Position: Wetlands

Golfers may see it as just another water hazard, but, in fact, the constructed wetlands on Purdue University's Kampen Course, West Lafayette, Ind., prevent potential pollutants from damaging the environment. Moreover, the constructed wetlands' efficacy in enhancing water quality improves as the system ages, according to researchers. Their findings could provide solutions for protection of similar areas by using urban golf courses.

The cleanup occurs when microscopic organisms--primarily bacteria--in wetland plants, sediments, and golf course grass trap and use much of the residue that otherwise might harm environmentally sensitive areas. "This is an ongoing study of how created wetlands on a golf course can filter water from commercial and residential areas to protect the environment," notes Zac Reicher, a Purdue Department of Agronomy turf specialist.

The researchers wanted to determine whether constructed wetlands on a golf course could substantially improve water quality by reducing or even eradicating chemicals such as atrazine, chloride, nitrogen nitrate, ammonia nitrogen, organic carbon, phosphorus, aluminum, iron, potassium, manganese, and various solids before the water entered natural waterways. In this study, the recovering natural wetland is West Lafayette's Celery Bog bordering the Kampen Course, part of Purdue's Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex.

"We already knew that proper use of fertilizers and pesticides on golf courses does not add any chemicals to surface or ground water," Reicher says. "In fact, the grass itself actually will use or trap most of the nutrients and chemicals contained in runoff from adjacent areas." The tracts from which runoff flows into the golf course...