End of the drought – but no end to the water debate

Good news for all golf courses in Germany: The drought phase in Germany is officially over. “The drought has dissipated, it’s actually no longer a problem throughout Germany,” said Andreas Marx, Head of the Drought Monitor at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ), recently in Leipzig at the presentation of the latest weather data. Nevertheless, the water supply for golf courses remains a topic around which countless questions revolve. Questions that have not played a role in Germany for decades. The core issue is who will be allowed to use how much and which water in the future. In the words of the German government, it is about the national water strategy, which was adopted in March 2023. This is new insofar as there have been no uniform regulations on the subject of water in Germany up to now.

Authorities change the specifications

For Kersten Preussler, Vice President at GC Odenwald, this national requirement has been reflected in concrete figures since 2023. “Our water withdrawal is now linked to the water level of the Mümling,” he said last year, explaining the stipulations that were made in the case of the GC Odenwald in Darmstadt and are now valid. If the water level of the Mümling is below 0.5118 meters, water withdrawal is stopped. In 2022, the Mümling had a water level below 0.5118 meters a few times.

The case of GC Odenwald is just one example of many that can be found within the German golf scene since last year. The water supply for agriculture, cities, households, industry and sports facilities is now determined by a Germany-wide requirement to save water. Golf courses are not exempt. The changes for golf courses are many and varied, but they are similar in only one respect: they come quickly, often unannounced. Be it that water permits are tied to the requirement of water collection from surface water. Be it that withdrawal quantities are linked to water levels in flowing waters. Permits for the abstraction of drinking water are sometimes stopped altogether.

Fees increase

In Lower Saxony, golf courses were unceremoniously reclassified as “other” in the water registration in 2023, which led to an increase in the fee for one cubic meter of water from EUR 0.014 per cubic meter to EUR 0.18 per cubic meter. The state of Lower Saxony has since changed this classification again. In fact, however, one question in particular arises in this environment: What happens if the price of water possibly rises to 0.5 euros? 20,000 cubic meters would then cost 10,000 euros. However, quite a few golf courses in Germany require more than just 20,000 cubic meters per year.

The introduction of the so-called water cent has now become an issue even in Bavaria, where, according to politicians, water was previously available in abundance and in the best quality. Since 2003, however, according to documentation from the State Office for the Environment, groundwater recharge has tipped into the negative. The annual deficit is about one-sixth.

Bavaria’s Minister President Markus Söder has now also announced the introduction of a water cent for Bavaria. “The ‘water cent’ shows how precious our water is,” said Söder during the budget consultations in March 2023. “It can’t be that this water, some of which is 10,000 years old, can just be used by anyone for free – it’s too precious and too valuable for that.”

Golf clubs respond with construction measures

In fact, numerous German golf clubs are now very active with regard to this topic. “A good half of all inquiries right now involving construction work on a golf course also involve optimizing the water supply,” explains Thomas Himmel of Himmel Golf Design. “GC Hetzenhof’s storage pond, with a capacity of 40,000 cubic meters, is just one example of how hard some facilities are working toward water self-sufficiency.”

In doing so, the Munich-based golf course designer points out some key aspects of replanning the water supply. “With storage ponds, it’s not just the capacity that matters, but also the evaporation area, optimal location in the terrain and, in the end, how the excavation is handled and how it’s integrated into the game’s strategy.” Water management, Himmel says, is a bit of a puzzle in a way: “This is about coming up with the right sprinkler system, drainage and collection systems, turf varieties and cutting schedules to arrive at an overall concept in the end.”

Regional differences

This also applies with regard to the development of possible heavy rainfall events. At the moment, in fact, it is not yet possible to determine with any certainty from a scientific point of view exactly what precipitation in Germany will look like in the future. “How this will develop in Germany is not yet entirely clear,” explained one of the country’s leading water experts, Prof. Dr. Mariele Evers, ecohydrologist at the University of Bonn, in the Spiegel climate podcast. “Above all, we have to see that we have regional differences. In some areas we will see more precipitation, but in other areas – especially in the northeast of Germany – we will have quite significant decreases. Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Berlin are getting drier. That means a lot less precipitation and therefore a risk of droughts.”

Service water becomes an alternative

This message has long been heard in the Berlin region. The golf courses here were largely brown and parched during the dry phase in 2022. At the Märkischer Golf Club Potsdam, Managing Director Martin Westphal is now running a pilot project to supply the greens with recycled water. The Hessian golf club Hof Hausen vor der Sonne has been working with treated sewage water for years.

The topic of water management is therefore definitely taking over Germany’s golf courses. The German Golf Association has now started a national survey of water data, and the Bavarian Golf Association has declared water to be the topic of the year. The industry has long been grappling with the question of what responsible water management will look like on German golf courses in the future. The official end of the drought phase has not changed this.