golf courses are trying to defend themselves against controversies related to watering
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The rain begins to fall this Friday, August 19 on the national golf course of Guyancourt, in the Yvelines, to the delight of Lucas Pierré, its superintendent. At the wheel of his cart, he is annoyed to have to justify himself again. “If the gas stations for washing cars are open, I don’t see why we would no longer have the right to use water to water our courses”, he explains. Skin tanned by the sun and dressed in a blue sleeveless vest, Lucas Pierré is in charge of the maintenance of the three golf courses on the 150-hectare site.
Since the beginning of the summer, the lack of rain and the heat wave have affected almost the entire territory. For several elected officials and environmental activists, water is far too important a resource to be “wasted” on golf courses in this period of extreme drought – the most intense that France has known since the middle of the 20th century.e century.
Several actions by activists have multiplied in recent weeks, aimed at denouncing the watering of courses: on August 16, in Limoges, golf holes were blocked with plants by Extinction Rebellion, which had attacked on August 10 two golf courses in the Toulouse conurbation; on August 22, the Collectif Ibiza set up a vegetable garden on a green at the Saint-Germain-en-Laye golf course.
This morning we set up a vegetable garden on a golf green in the Yvelines. While episodes of dry… https://t.co/b8xsU5XDil
Gestures supported by Eric Piolle, the EELV mayor of Grenoble: “When we can’t water anything anywhere, when everyone is short of water and our lawns are yellow, why can we still water the golf greens? », he revolted on the set of BFM-TV in July.
Pascal Grizot, the president of the French Golf Federation (FFGolf), says he understands the controversies. “I can accept that watering golf courses can create excitement among the public who do not know what a golf course is”, he assures us, but, according to him, “the attacks that have been made are unjust and, above all, they are very poorly informed by politicians who do not know what they are talking about »arguing that the figure of 5,000 cubic meters of water per day put forward by Hendrik Davi, LFI-Nupes deputy for Bouches-du-Rhône, who nevertheless relies on a Senate reportis wrong.
“This figure includes days of peak attendance, but this is not the reality. The national average annual water consumption of an 18-hole golf course is 50,000 cubic meters per year. »
Eric Piolle does not budge, even if for him the controversy is not only about figures, “it comes from the principle of the use of water. The government protects the richest, because the greens can continue to be watered, but the population can no longer water their vegetable garden..
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