On the edge of St. George’s Sunbrook Golf Course, manicured greens give way to a mound of gray rock dotted with small palm trees, yuccas and desert shrubs.
Compared to the sea of green turf, it might not look like much. This spot, however, marks a new chapter in southwest Utah’s quest to stretch its limited water supply. The gravelly knoll, completed in October, is the first golf course grass removed through the Washington County Water Conservancy District’s landscaping rebate program.
“That's about 6,000 square feet,” district Conservation Manager Doug Bennett said as he motioned toward the project site. “I would expect an area that size would be saving more than 200,000 gallons of water per year.”
It’s a good start, he said, but this fast-growing desert community needs a lot more of it.
“About one of every 10 gallons of water served in this region goes onto a golf course, and that's a lot of responsibility.”
The new section of desert landscaping at Sunbrook Golf Course, Dec. 3, 2024. Even though it’s small, its water savings show the potential of expanding this type of conservation across Washington County’s many golf courses. Photo by David Condos/KUER
Conservation is an essential piece of the district’s 20-year water plan to sustain the county into the 2040s. Increasing those efforts is expected to account for roughly a quarter of the new water the county needs to keep up with population growth.
The rebate, which pays property owners up to $2 per square foot of grass replaced, is one of the big ways to incentivize the switch to less thirsty desert landscaping. It’s already catching on with residents, but Bennett said government and commercial properties — including golf courses — have been slow to come around.
“We absolutely have to get some of the water savings from the golf industry,” Bennett said. “I don't think that means shuttering courses. It doesn't mean wrecking the game of golf. I think it means changing the way we look at the design of these pieces of land.”
Sunbrook Superintendent Ken Steed said starting with this particular mound made sense because it’s hard for landscapers to access.
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “We'll start with this, and there's a lot more to go. We got a lot of work to do.”
Conserving more water is vital to the future of St. George. One big step toward stretching the area’s water supply would be removing sections of irrigated grass at southwest Utah’s many golf courses, such as Sunbrook Golf Course, seen here Dec. 3, 2024. Photo by David Condos/KUER
Sunbrook plans to eventually remove grass from five of its 155 acres, Steed said, and has looked for other ways to reduce water use. For example, the course has already grown around 10 acres of native plants, which require less water than mowed turf, and cut back on seeding cool season grasses that require extra irrigation.
Even when golf courses start getting on board with more conservation efforts, Bennett said it will take a while to see the results.
“These are big projects, and they're going to move a little slower than some of the residential projects do. But when they eventually come online, they're going to be big water-saving projects.”
Bennett is confident this strategy can add up to significant water savings because he saw it in his decades of conservation work with the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas. Eventually, he said, around three-fourths of the golf courses there replaced some of their grass, and they saved so much water combined that it was the equivalent of nine entire courses being removed.
One of the things Bennett’s team did to persuade Las Vegas courses was researching which sections of grass weren’t being used. Golfers would carry GPS devices while they played, and that data highlighted the turf that could be removed without being missed.
Bennett has tried to partner with Washington County golf courses on similar GPS research but has not gotten any takers so far.
“Whenever the golf industry is ready, we'll be there.”
