Friday, April 10, 1998 | 10:34 a.m.
Experts agree that golf courses constructed on top of old landfills are safe but they also agree that care must be taken, particularly with desert soils.
Two problems with desert landfills are subsidence (collapsing soil) and methane gas once irrigation of a golf course begins, said Ed Kavazanjian, an engineer with GeoSyntech Consultants of Huntington Beach, Calif.
"There tends to be a lot of subsidence," Kavazanjian said, explaining that the ground can sink by more than foot once greens are in place.
A recreational plan has been proposed here for the Sunrise Mountain landfill. Leahi Hills Development Inc. wants to build a golf course and tennis-trails complex atop the closed landfill.
Leahi President James Gomes said he discovered the 720-acre site while riding horseback on Sunrise Mountain. The spectacular views of the Las Vegas Valley, he said, convinced him a 72-hole golf course, tennis courts and riding trails would be a perfect use for the landfill, which was closed in 1993.
Both the city of Las Vegas and Clark County are interested in selling their treated wastewater to irrigate the greens, he said.
Gomes estimates it will take up to $50 million to plan, design and build the golf course.
But the federal Bureau of Land Management, the site's landlord, will not release the land until the unlined landfill, which was capped in 1995 but has since experienced cracking and methane gas leaks, is shut down properly.
"We're not opposed to using that site," said Michael Moran, the BLM's solid waste manager in Las Vegas. The BLM has encouraged Clark County to negotiate with Leahi.
But don't expect to play the back nine too soon. It's a matter of closing the landfill to meet federal and state laws, Moran said.
After BLM's consultants discovered low explosive levels of methane gas and toxic chemicals as well as pesticides in the landfill, the agency has been reluctant to release the land.
"The site is not closed properly," Moran said. "If the BLM puts the site up for sale, it will do so only after proper closure and under a competitive bidding process.
"If the site is marketable, then let other developers bid on it."
The transition from trash heaps to teeing off has transformed about 100 throw-away sites in the United States to golf courses, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Patty Collins, who works at EPA's Region 9 office in San Francisco and oversees the transition of land from refuse to reuse, said she has seen her share of such transformations, the latest in Fullerton, Calif., where the McColl golf course is under construction on a former landfill.
"It was a perfect match of technology and the environment," she said of the Fullerton course. Developers, however, have to take care of the health and safety issues posed by whatever is left in the landfill in an orderly, step-by-step process, she said.
The biggest problem for developing a golf course at Sunrise landfill is meeting the federal deadline for capturing methane gas, said Michael Naylor, director of the Clark County Health District's Air Pollution Control Division.
"If we could clean up the landfill and make money at the same time, that would be nice," Naylor said, explaining most landfills sell methane gas to generate electricity.
Naylor said he sees the landfill, if it can be developed as a golf course, transformed in stages. First, capture and burn off or sell the methane gas by July 1999, the federal EPA deadline for handling the gas that contributes to global warming. Then develop the golf course area in phases.
Most of the converted landfill sites are smaller than Sunrise, running between 100 to 300 acres. And none of them have been located on multiple-use BLM lands.
The following is a progress report on some sites:
* The city of Industry, Calif., took a 600-acre site and turned it into two 18-hole golf courses as well as a recreation area. Grading during the 1960s cost more than $4 million. Methane gas powers an exhibit and conference center.
* The Mountaingate landfill operated from 1965 to 1980 in eight canyons of Southern California's foothills. Today, the golf course, built in four of those canyons outside Los Angeles, supplies methane gas to UCLA, more than four miles away. The university uses the methane, blended with natural gas, to power combustion turbine generators for power.
* The Willowhills Golf Course in Northbrook, Ill., was built on a site after Waste Management Inc. buried up to 500 truckloads of solid waste a day for 22 years there. Today it's an 85-acre, nine-hole golf course and driving range. The decomposing waste underneath the greens produces enough electricity to power 10,000 homes. The electricity produced from captured methane gas lights and air conditions the clubhouse and other buildings on the site. Soil settled at the rate of about 1 foot a year. So did drainage control ditches leading from the site, another factor that caused problems and delays.
Local ordinances required that the Willowhills entrance road and parking lot use concrete curbs and gutters along with asphalt paving. But the ground was moving so fast, the course got a five-year grace period to monitor the change in the grade and slow the settlement. Local officials would not issue a variance, which could set a precedent. Instead, they insisted on an experimental permit.
* Harborside International Golf Course, about 20 miles outside Chicago, draws its water from Lake Michigan. The course contains its runoff within the site and municipal wastewater treatment plants clean the water and return it to the lake. The American Academy of Environmental Engineers recognized Harborside for excellence in engineering in 1996.
* Smelter smokestacks once filled Anaconda, Mont., with fumes from a prosperous mining industry. Visitors now stroll across 250 acres of a 72-hole community-owned golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. The $11 million cost of building the landfill came after spending $30 million for initial cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency monitored the cleanup and construction every step of the way. The Old Works Golf Course received a boost from Atlantic Richfield Co. as well as the Montana Department of Health and Environmental Sciences and the U.S. Justice Department. The private-public partnership transformed this federal Superfund site into a successful recreational area.
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