WATER QUALITY IMPACTS BY GOLF COURSES: A METASTUDY (2007)
Baris, R.D., J. Lam, S.Z. Cohen, and N.L. Barnes. 2007.
Water Quality Impacts by Golf Courses: A Metastudy. Presented at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North America 28th Annual Meeting, Milwaukee WI. Poster # MP 93.
Interest in water quality impacts by golf courses has grown significantly in the last two decades, due in part to the intense public scrutiny proposed golf courses receive during the local permitting process. Results from permit-driven studies are frequently not published nor is there usually widespread knowledge about them. We previously reported an assessment of data from 17 studies of 36 golf courses (Cohen et al., 1999). This current study is an update of the previous effort, involving data collected from a total of 80 golf courses. Forty-four studies involving 80 courses from a 20 year period passed our quality control and other review criteria and were incorporated into a detailed data review. A total of 40,791 data points (where one analysis for one substance in one sample equals a data entry) from pesticide, pesticide metabolite, total phosphorus, and nitrate analyses of surface water and ground water were reviewed. Analytes included 195 pesticides and pesticide metabolites (194 in the surface water database and 176 in the ground water database). Widespread and/or repeated water quality impacts by golf courses had not occurred at the sites studied. None of the authors of the newly added individual studies concluded that toxicologically significant impacts were observed, although HALs, MCLs, or MACs were occasionally exceeded. The percent of individual pesticide database entries that exceed HALs/MCLs for ground water and surface water are 0.07% and 0.33% respectively. The percentages would be higher if they could be expressed in terms of samples collected rather than chemicals analyzed. The MCL (10 mg/L) for nitrate-nitrogen in surface water was exceeded in 20/2,493 entries (~1.2% of nitrate-N entries), and only 16/1,377 (1.2%) of the samples exceeded the MCL in ground water. There were 1,236 exceedances of the total phosphorus ecoregional criteria in five ecoregions of 1,429 data entries - - 1,083 for rivers and streams, and 153 for lakes and reservoirs. The inclusion of the EPA's ecoregional criteria, pesticide use data, specific ground water regions, climate zones, as well as additional data for golf courses in the northwestern, mid-continent, and southwestern portions of the country provide a more comprehensive analysis of water quality impacts by golf courses compared with the 1999 meta-analysis.