Saga of a Disc Golf Course Restructure - Part 5

Excited by the possibility of new holes, and even twenty one of them, we were eager to show the environmental committee around our proposed layout. Due to scheduling conflicts, members the committee had to come on two separate weekends. The first tour we gave went well, if a little on the wet side. We guided the members through most of the path we’d explored, trying to avoid the blackberries as much as possible. By and large, they seemed supportive of the layout, the only concern they posed was where the park’s property line stopped and private property began, and whether we were walking through somebody else’s property to get to the new holes.

The second tour, however, did not go as smoothly. In addition to the committee members that we were expecting, Robin, the environmental anti-disc golf lady, showed up to take the tour as well. Cue the ominous music (Darth Vader’s Imperial March would be a fitting piece). I try to see things as equitably as possible, I too consider myself to be an environmentalist, but in my honest opinion, Robin has taken things a bit overboard. She supposedly visits the park every day to enjoy nature and birdwatch, and her ultimate goal would be to make the park a wilderness sanctuary with little to no human interaction. Disc golf, she feels, is environmentally damaging and threatening to the local bird populations.

Throughout the tour, anything, that we were trying to point out as a potential hole, she would find some way to point out something negative about the idea. Much of the tour was her and Lowell butting heads and arguing like pundits on Fox News. It wasn’t a particularly mature display by either party and I just prayed that committee members were feeling as awkward as I was. Robin’s main concerns that she was voicing were related to damaging alders (a soft-barked tree that shows damage easily), disturbing birds, and erosion.

When the time for the next committee meeting came around, we were hoping to get final approval on the course, or at least have an indication of what would be happening. Some of the committee members expressed concern about potential erosion with the layout we proposed–just a theory, but I’m guessing the concerns wouldn’t have been present had Robin not suggested them. After the committee members voiced their concerns, they turned the meeting over to the floor for public comments.

This was the opportunity for Robin to launch on a half hour speech about how an environmental protection act was passed on the park, barring ANY further development, particularly on any land that was above a certain grade of elevation. Any development that would have the possibility of being approved would have to be fifty feet from either the top or bottom of a hill. Terrace Creek Park basically consists of nothing but hills. There are some flat areas present, but either they are already being used (the field for hole 4, for example), or they are the wetlands that we already know are unusable. We had not known anything about the protection act that had been passed, and the majority of the committee seemed ignorant to it as well. But a glaring inconsistency that arose to me was that the dog park was being allowed to be installed, even though it was far more development than we would be doing, and on the hillside of a valley. And we wouldn’t even be trying to scope out new holes if it weren’t for the dog park being put in. To Robin’s credit, she was also fiercely opposed to the dog park, but I’m afraid that since she lost that fight, she want to fight this one all the more vigorously.

Robin questioned the legality of the course even existing in the first place, citing the areas where the course didn’t comply with the act. The one thing we have going for us is that the disc golf course was in place before the environmental protection act was passed, so we have a chance at being grandfathered in. The difficulty though, is that even if we are allowed to keep the course, if holes are taken out, we don’t necessarily have the possibility of relocating them to a new place.

In order to present ourselves as best as possible, we have worked hard to replant the hillside where hole 9 was taken out–it now looks like there was never a disc golf hole there at all. In addition, we have had many work parties in order to work on the new holes we put in on the east side to curb erosion and damage as best we can. Apparently, not all park users are as anti-disc golf as Robin. A lady out walking her dog saw us replanting the hillside and commented on how she was fond of the disc golfers and all they do, and in turn wrote a glowing letter to the city council speaking of how she was supportive of us. Also of note, Robin cited that we were endangering the habitat of the pileated woodpecker, a protected species. Since then, we have seen several of them in our established fairways, one let me get within about twenty feet of it before it flew away. It seems obvious to me that the woodpeckers aren’t too concerned with disc golfers.

Nonetheless, we go into what is supposed to be the final meeting when we learn what will happen to the course. We go into it blindly, not knowing what the committee is thinking, whether we will get to lay out our dream course, if we will be able to add any holes, or even if we will be able to keep the course at all. I’m doing the best to remain optimistic, but I truly am a nervous wreck over the situation.