Westridge rare green golf spot
By Suzanne Werre
Editor
Most of the lawns and ditches, and even fields, are looking pretty dry and crispy after this particularly hot and windy summer. What better way to de-stress from the hot weather than to play a couple of rounds of golf.
While lawns may be looking pretty dire, the fairways and greens at Underwood’s Westridge Golf Course are still looking pretty lush and green thanks to the French drain watering system the golf course uses.
“We’ve got kind of a unique situation going on there,” commented Falkirk Mine’s Steve Cottingham, who also happens to the president of the Westridge Golf Course.
The golf course was originally being watered using water from some of the city’s old wells that were still operational, but they didn’t always keep up with the needs of the course, said Cottingham.
“We started out in about the same situation we have this year, somewhere around ’88 or ’89. The mine did step in and provided us with groundwater they had that they could divert into the course system. Then, in an effort to kind of make that long-term to sustain things, they came up with this idea of the French drain,” said Cottingham.
The Falkirk Mining Company buried pipe deep underground south of Underwood’s lagoon, with the knowledge that ground water will naturally collect in that area of the pipeline.
