Hook Pond Cure For Maidstone’s Fairway Blues

Green desire prompts demand for more water

By Russell Drumm

Morgan McGivern According to the Maidstone Club plan, Hook Pond would be an ideal source of water for fairway irrigation.

(04/12/2007)    The Maidstone Club, a more than 100-year-old bulwark of exclusivity on the oceanfront of East Hampton Village, intends to begin irrigating the fairways of its venerable links course for the first time in its history. In addition to potentially changing the challenging nature of the course, the plan has raised questions and varied opinions about its environmental impact.

    Robert Williams, the club’s golf superintendent, appeared before the East Hampton Town Trustees on Tuesday night to ask if they had any objections to the club using water from Hook Pond, which the golf course surrounds. The trustees, who were established in colonial times, own and manage Hook Pond on behalf of the public.

    Mr. Williams described the club’s plans and answered questions. The trustees, however, did not take a stand when the session ended. Instead, they asked Mr. Williams to keep them informed.

    According to Mr. Williams, the Maidstone is one of only a few of Long Island’s 120 or 130 courses that does not water its fairways.

    “We only water the tees and greens now using groundwater,” he said. He reported that the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which, in addition to the trustees, claims jurisdiction over the pond, had frowned on taking additional water from the ground for the fairways for fear that it would cause saltwater to be pulled into the freshwater supply. Larry Penny, East Hampton’s director of natural resources, who attended the meeting, also advised  against using groundwater. Otherwise, Mr. Williams said, preliminary talks with the State Department of Environmental Conservation “seemed okay.” 

    “We want to create a better course year round,” Mr. Williams said. “Using the pond was seen as the most attractive option.”

     The 80-acre coastal pond is fed by a four-mile-long watershed that starts half way up Three Mile Harbor Road to the north. Mr. Penny noted the somewhat isolated nature of Hook Pond, a public resource largely surrounded by private property. Unlike Georgica Pond to the west, Hook Pond is also inaccessible to anadromous fish, he said, because an outflow pipe system there has stabilized the pond, replacing its occasional opening either by nature or the town trustees. The pipe allows freshwater to be spilled into the sea when it threatens to flood the pond’s banks.

    Mr. Penny suggested that since Hook Pond is a public waterway, the trustees might consider asking the club to compensate it for the water it intends to use for its private links. At the same time, he did not raise environmental objections. “If done right, it should be okay,” he said. “Using pond water for irrigation would be cleaning it, but you wouldn’t want irrigation to run back into the pond.”

    The club’s proposal was based on a study, Mr. Williams said, which showed that one foot of water represents 25 million gallons. The amount of water used for irrigation would lower the pond by no more than an inch or an inch and a half per week. “I now control the height of the pond with the pipe,” Mr. Williams said, referring to the stabilization pipe, which was rebuilt last year by East Hampton Village.

    Mr. Williams answered in the affirmative when asked if more pesticide would be used as a result of watering the fairways. But, he said, it would be applied no more than six to eight times a year. He said pesticide and fertilizer would only be applied in dry weather, and that a 30-foot buffer, free of chemicals, would be maintained between the area where pesticide was applied and the pond. The course supervisor said the fairways had been treated for years without affecting the quality of the pond water. “It’s tested all the time.”

 

East Hampton Star Archives A member of the Maidstone Club of old addressed the ball and picked his line down the fairway. The old link’s fairways would be irrigated for the first time if the club’s plan is approved.

   “We want to take a look at it to see where the water’s going. Testing makes sense,” Robert DeLuca, president of the Group for the South Fork, an environmental advocate, said when asked for an opinion yesterday. Mr. DeLuca said irrigating the fairways might actually preclude dangerous runoff. “Say you have a period of dry weather. The soil hardens up and the result is sheet runoff.”

    “The other example that we know from regular lawn maintenance is when there’s a dry period, other things get in there, weeds, which encourages people to dump stuff,” Mr. DeLuca said. “It has the potential for a good strategy,” he said.

    Assuming the irrigation plan is approved by the trustees and the State Department of Environmental Conservation, a pipe would be extended 50 feet into the pond near the course’s third green. Water would be gravity-fed to a wet well and pumping station. Pond water would replace groundwater for watering the tees and greens once the system was on line, Mr. Williams said.

    Reached yesterday morning, Mr. Williams said that in the beginning golfing members of the club wielded woods, irons, and putters on a three-hole course, then a six-hole course, “and, as they acquired land, holes were added.” He said the course’s current design began to take shape in the 1920s with 12 holes added after 80 acres were purchased from the Gardiner family. For a time, the links had 36 holes. A number of them stretched out beside the ocean on leased land parallel to Further Lane. 

    Kevin Smith, the golf pro at Montauk Downs, said the term links course “is thrown around loosely these days.” Originally, it meant a course built on “unfarmable land” near a body of water. Mr. Williams agreed, saying the roots of the links course ran to Scotland. “Links courses are near the sea, open, wind-swept with sandy soil, not hilly, and a lack of trees. There is a lot of fescue, deep, rough, grasses that don’t require a lot of water.”  Both men said that traditional links courses played fast because of ground that was generally harder.

    Mr. Williams said it was important to control the irrigation of the fairways so as not to damage the Maidstone’s links character. “A links course should be firm and fast. It’s up to who’s putting water on; just enough water to keep the grass from dying or going dormant. You can overwater, a bad thing. It could change the nature of the course,” Mr. Williams said.

    He told the trustees the plan would be costly, “but we feel it’s worth it.”