The word “golf” conjures visions of pastoral ease, of sun-dappled greens that carve through shady forests and roll alongside placid ponds.
But Sandy Springs, Ga., didn’t have much of that. What the park-starved community did have was trash, a pile 120 acres across. And with open space at a premium, an entrepreneur with visions of golf had little other choice.
Now the closed Morgan Falls landfill has been converted into an 18-hole, executive-length golf course — apparently the first golf course on a landfill in Georgia. It’s a national trend as builders replace open space with homes, and the people who fill those homes want recreation.
The stinky Morgan Falls landfill was a constant source of complaints from people who lived nearby and from environmental regulators concerned about polluting the nearby Chattahoochee River. Now, golfers are admiring the ridges and valleys next to the river.
“It’s beautiful; we love these vistas and views,” said George Clowers, who had just popped a ball off the 6th tee on a recent sunny afternoon.
The 4,100-yard, par 61 golf course was built by Kay Broaddus, a former marketing executive with Coca-Cola. She said her company, Eagle Golf Ventures, spent $5 million on the course after her research indicated pent up demand for the sport.
People wanted golf, but development had gobbled the large chunks of land. Meanwhile, Fulton County had a landfill that had been full since 1988 and was costing $250,000 a year to maintain. On top of that, state officials were concerned about poor county groundskeeping that resulted in erosion and runoff.
“It wasn’t a routine maintenance program like it should have been, so the landfill suffered for it,” said David Gibbons, a regulator with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.
County Commissioner Bob Fulton helped Broaddus get the project approved. He said the county spent $1 million on a methane extraction system. Now the county gets $40,000 a year from Broaddus’ Eagle Golf Ventures, which has a 25-year lease. And the public will get 2 percent of the greens fees each year her Blue Heron Golf Club sells more than 70,000 rounds. At $25 to $33 a round, that will work out to a minimum of $35,000 to $46,000 a year once the club is doing enough business. Currently, the club, which opened Sept. 1, is on target for a rate of nearly 41,000 rounds, Broaddus said.
The biggest boon for taxpayers, however, is the savings on upkeep. Broaddus is responsible for maintaining the property. “Without this greenery, we would have a continual problem with erosion,” Fulton said.
Residents in the area seem happy the landfill is gone. Although some felt the county should have considered uses that didn’t involve a private company and a playing fee, most think the golf course is an improvement, said Eva Galambos, an activist who lives on the ridge north of the old landfill. “I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful addition to the community.”
The treeless site was an eyesore and a design challenge. It is adjacent to a Georgia Power generating plant and is crossed by power lines. A pipeline carrying gasoline from Texas to New Jersey runs underground. Methane extraction wells dot the field.
Landscape architect Michael Riley said he pulled every trick to distract from the visual clutter. He used land contours, bunkers and variations in the grass texture.
Regulations prohibit digging into landfills, so the only way to grade much of the site was to truck in thousands of loads of dirt and build up, he said. But there also was a limit on how much Riley could pile beneath the power lines, and Colonial Pipeline didn’t want heavy equipment driving over its gasoline line.
“It’s not Augusta National,” Riley said. “But it does what it was supposed to do.”
The Georgia State Golf Association knows of no other golf courses built on landfills in the state. And Gibbons, the state regulator, said he believes Blue Heron is the first, although he said about a half-dozen closed landfills are being used as airstrips for model airplane enthusiasts, and some nature trails cross landfills.
More Top Picks Guylines
Outside Georgia, golf courses on landfills are not a novel concept.
Bill Love, a golf course architect in College Park, Md., worked on his first one in the 1980s. He estimated there are at least 50 around the country now. “I know they’ve been around at least 15, 20 years,” he said.
Love, who is the environmental committee chairman of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, said the next big national trend will be designing landfills for use after closing. If, for instance, one plans to swing and putt, trash can be dumped along convenient contours; when the landfill is full, the course can go right on top.
“You don’t have to worry about going back and modifying the terrain,” Love said. “With a little advanced planning, I think landfills offer great opportunity.”