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Environmental Principles
All golf courses designed by Robbins & Associates take the latest methods of design, construction and maintenance into account. We follow a process that protects the environmental resources of a site to the maximum extent possible.
Some of the steps are as follows:
We personally walk each site with the Environmental Consultants chosen by the owner to assess the existing environmental features of the property – water resources, soils, topography, wildlife and vegetation.- The routing of the golf course and master plan for the development are done to avoid adverse impacts to the environmental resources that have been identified by leaving them in their natural state as much as possible. This includes taking care to fit the course to the terrain so that total earthwork volumes are kept to a minimum.
- “Best Management Practices” are utilized in the construction of the project to minimize soil erosion into streams and ponds.
- Natural vegetation is used to buffer and provide natural cleaning of drainage flow from the golf course to the streams and ponds.
- Drainage pipes from golf course maintained areas are fed to places where natural filtration can occur before reaching water bodies.
- On all projects approved by the owner, Robbins & Associates works in cooperation with Audubon International to produce a “Natural Resource Management Plan” (NRMP) that is used to describe all the detailed steps of how the golf course and community will be operated and maintained to continue to meet high environmental standards.
- Turf grasses are selected that are best suited to the climate of the site and that require the least amount of chemical application.
- The design of the course is done to reduce the total area of active maintenance.
- The golf course design is done in close cooperation with the project engineers and planners to coordinate with any adjacent housing or resort development.
- Robbins & Associates have worked on the design of many projects that utilize reclaimed waste water for irrigation purposes and they understand the complex issues involved with this ever-increasing use.