NORWICH - The superintendent of the Norwich Golf Course says the dry weather we've endured this summer is worse than any other that he can recall in his 26 years tending to the course.
Bruce Morse, who says daytime highs in the 70s and nighttime lows in the 50s would be a perfect combination to promote healthy growth, noted that the course really ran into trouble on Saturday afternoon, when their radios used to activate sprinklers throughout the course malfunctioned.
He said his crew was forced to manually water the greens for a couple of days during heat that topped out near 100 degrees.
Morse says several of the course's greens were impacted. Bare spots are still visible, but he says since his crew punched and over seeded the greens several days ago, you can already notice the recovery well underway.
Over the last month and a half, the city has been forced to spend approximately an extra $5,000 to keep the course properly watered. And, Morse ads, the annual fee, to water the 18-hole course, comes in at roughly $100,000. But, that fee could soon be drastically reduced.
Morse noted that approximately 2,000,000 gallons of water travels through the public golf course every day. Presently, the course cannot tap into this water, though, because the DEEP has control of the water.
Moore says if a deal is negotiated, he expects that within the next two years the course will only have to pay for the cost of the electricity to run the pumps, which would extract water that is drinking quality.
