Note the concrete weir that holds back water from draining into Minnehaha Creek
BY KATHRYN KELLY
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board revealed their latest Hiawatha Golf Course concepts.
Homeowners, Beware!
Homeowners should be worried. This information is very important:
809 to 812.8 feet – Current golf course elevation
814 to 815 feet – New golf course elevation
811 to 814 feet – Lake Hiawatha elevation
810 feet and above – Basement elevations of homes.
The proposed plan will permanently fill the golf course property with water and dirt (fill). Water would be at the level of Lake Hiawatha and dirt would be permanently added to raise the new golf course to 814-815 feet. This is a loss of up to 5-6 feet of flood storage on the property. The Park Board says that this will be offset by digging deeper holes in the golf course property to offset the lost storage, but we see nothing that indicates that these holes will not be permanently filled with water. Thus, this volume will not be available for the next big flood to protect the homes, all because the Park Board doesn’t want to pump water. No public entities, except the Park Board, have stated concerns about the current pumping, since it is harming NOTHING!
Right now the golf course does not flood until the lake level reaches the top of the berm at 815.7 feet. The new golf course would be built to an elevation of between 814 and 815 feet with no berm to protect it. So, it appears that the new golf course will flood at a lower lake level than the current golf course. The golf course will drain naturally, but flood more often? How is that better?
The pond on hole six would be connected to a new ditch across the street from the homes on 19th Avenue. The ditch will drain the water to the north (uphill?) where they will daylight the 43rd street pipe. Then the storm water from the pond and pipe will flow through a ditch on the golf course to an open connection to the lake. Staff admitted that the water in the ditches will be at the level of the lake. Thus, the bottoms of some of the basements of the homes across the street will, at times, be below the water level of the ditch. The Park Board said that they will figure out later how to pump the water out of the neighborhood to keep the homes dry.
In Concept C, the driving range would be in the northwest corner of the property, right across the street from homes and it would be surrounded by water. Who will retrieve golf balls out of the water and the neighborhood, plus how many broken windows and injuries will there be? Concepts A and B will likely still put golf balls into the neighborhood on 43rd street. Looks like new liability costs?
Water and Pollution!
The golf course holes are surrounded by massive amounts of water, reminiscent of the original plans put out by the Park Board that went over like a lead balloon? We called them Water World. This much water is totally inappropriate for beginner and intermediate golfers. And, this is terrible for a municipal golf course in a mixed income city (lost balls = higher cost to play), not to mention polluting the lake and wetland with thousands of golf balls!
Using ponds (storm water) for irrigation is nothing new even though the Park Board may portray it as new; the current 18-hole golf course already does this! And, what does reducing “water consumption needs” mean? Less ground to irrigate? If so, the water is free, so this is meaningless!
With this system, all of the waterways are now part of Lake Hiawatha. So, the Park Board is still dumping water directly into Lake Hiawatha. The pollution is just being distributed along lengthy, narrow portions of the lake which will be cleaned up how? This will be a huge and tricky maintenance task as the Park Board found out with the pond system at Lake Nokomis (which they couldn’t properly maintain and have given up on). They should put the wetland demonstration area over at the Nokomis ponds where they can demonstrate how NOT TO DO IT!
And…
The “18-hole experience” is a joke. Multiple tees and two pin placements is ridiculous; it does not, in any way, provide “an 18-hole experience.” I guess the Park Board believes that this is all the Black community and people in the inner city deserve. I call it “putting lipstick on a pig.”
What about additional parkland for other activities? The Hiawatha Golf Course property (140 acres) would yield only 6-14 acres for other activities. The rest would be golf course and water.
The Park Board has let the Hiawatha Golf Course Audubon certification lapse, yet kept certification for their suburban courses. Now, they are bringing it back at Hiawatha? Why? So, they can try to make this new proposal look better than the current golf course?
How much will this plan cost? Six years later the Park Board still has no updated cost estimates.
Park Board Commissioners, why don’t you leave the golf course alone and convert the Nokomis softball fields on Cedar Avenue into all of the things non-golfers want. These fields are lightly used, while the golf course is busy all summer.
