EarthGolf

The drought in Florida has claimed its first golf victim - the Osprey Point Golf Course in Boca Rotan. Osprey Point is to be a 27-hole municipal golf course owned by Palm Beach County and part of the South County Regional Park.

The suspension of the permit to water the course resulted in the county stopping work on the course.

The South Florida Water Management District rescinded a 209-million-gallon-a-year water permit for the course in mid-April, just weeks after the district issued the permit on the same day it imposed drought water use restrictions.

The chairman of the district said he never would have allowed the permit to be issued if he’d realized that the golf course had no immediate plans to use reclaimed water to irrigate.

Well, there is a little more than an oversight of not realizing the golf course didn’t have intentions of using reclaimed water involved in this story. (What - that big pipe in the everglades not a big enough clue?)

On March 15, the same day that public water-use restrictions were imposed, the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District approved a permit to take 209 million gallons a year from the Everglades/drinking-water aquifer, dismissing demands from several public speakers that alternative water sources be used.

A month later, environmental lawyer March LaHart filed a legal challenge, and The Palm Beach Post reported that the agency’s top water regulator lived in a home owned by Robert Higgins, the outside engineering consultant hired to get the permit.

The irrigation permit was rescinded, and the staff member who had urged its approval, Robert Moresi, was put on paid leave pending investigation by the agency’s inspector general.

Oops! The course, which has a routing viewable online, was designed by Case Golf Company and was scheduled to open later this year. Now, it’s not known when construction will resume on the golf course.

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