The Tournament Players Club at Avenel, an 18-hole championship golf course in Potomac, is lobbying hard for approval of its proposal to overhaul the fairways and parts of the surrounding Rock Run watershed.
The special exception modification proposal, which has sparked concern about stormwater runoff and environmental damage among some homeowners, was discussed in detail before the Court of Appeals at a marathon public hearing that lasted the entire business day Monday, Nov. 6, and that will reconvene Wednesday morning.
On Monday, about 25 audience members sat in on the hearing before lunch and about 15 remained after lunch.
According to Richard Brogan, the project manager at Avenel, the following renovations are needed:
* New storm and fairway drainage.
* Creek and streambed restoration to prevent future flooding.
* All new greens.
* Regrassed fairways.
* Redesign for holes 9-13.
* Enhancements for holes 15-18.
* Upgrading and updating of practice facility.
* Interior and exterior renovation of the clubhouse, adding 10,669 square feet.
TPC at Avenel will be planting trees on approximately 11 acres in order to meet the county’s reforestation requirements. If the project is approved, Avenel would reopen in June or July 2008.
DURING THE LENGTHY hearing, Avenel called upon witnesses who elaborated on issues discussed at last month’s meeting at the River Falls Community Center. The golf course is partially located in the floodplain of Rock Run Creek, and flooding, stream bank erosion and sedimentation have posed problems. At the Booz Allen Classic earlier this year, the final round was pushed back two days because of wet conditions, the longest delay for a PGA tournament in more than 20 years. Avenel hopes to remedy the problem by hiring environmental engineers to restore Rock Run Creek. The environmental scientists want to carve out ‘legacy sediment’ left by human intervention and replant natural vegetation to better retain stormwater during flooding.
“The stream degradation and flooding that has occurred is something that frankly we feel we need to address because it is impacting the look of the golf course,” said James Triola, vice president of business and legal affairs for PGA Golf Course Properties. “It makes it difficult to run a first-class golf facility… especially one intended to host a first-class tournament.”
Hearing examiner Francoise Carrier will write an approximately 100-page report with a recommendation to approve or disapprove of Avenel’s proposal before sending it back to the planning board.
The examiner said she was concerned by Avenel’s newly proposed changes to its original plan.
She said that TPC at Avenel should limit proposal alterations so that the planning board would not send it to the Board of Appeals a second time.
“As much as I enjoy your company, I would prefer not to hold the same hearing twice,” she said. “If things move a couple of feet one direction or another, that’s not an issue – it’s if you’re coming up with whole new designs.”
LATER ON Monday afternoon, local citizens represented by Chuck Doran, president of the Brickyard Citizens Association, presented a statement and recommendations to the hearing examiner. They want an independent committee established to monitor the attempted stream bed restoration and to measures its effects on the entire area, and Doran said that Avenel seemed open to considering this recommendation. The group also lobbied for Avenel and the county to restore all 8 miles of Rock Run, not just the parts that lie within Avenel property, though Doran said Avenel representatives seemed unresponsive to this.
“One cannot treat the problem of stormwater and what it’s doing to these creeks in a very limited, isolationist sort of sense where the idea is to get water through your area as quickly as possible and then it’s someone else’s problem downstream,” Doran said in an interview after the meeting.
“[Avenel] wants to deal with the problem that they have specifically – they don’t want to be tied in to any other issues to what the problem is upstream or downstream from them,” he continued. “We take seriously the integrity of the whole stream, and we’re interested in the broader question of stormwater runoff and what it’s doing to the entire creek.”
Claudia Nagan is a Brickyard Road resident who attended the public hearing to hear the case made by TPC at Avenel. She said that Avenel initially seemed slow to involve the community in the project, but that ever since the meeting at the River Falls Community Center, she has been pleased overall with Avenel’s effort to get input from local homeowners.
“I feel like they have reached out and tried to communicate with us,” she said.
Nevertheless, she said that it is difficult to navigate the details of Avenel’s proposal without professional environmental advocates.
“Being a lay person, I don’t always know the right questions to ask,” she said.
STEVE DRYDEN is a leader in the Stormwater Partners Coalition, a network of environmental and civic groups that advocate for environmentally friendly stormwater management systems. Earlier this year, the Coalition published a list of the ten most impacted streams in the county, and Rock Run was one of them. Dryden hopes that community concern over the TPC at Avenel proposal will inspire more local community members to get involved with stream restoration and perhaps even form a “Friends of Rock Run” watchdog group to oversee the creek.
“An outgrowth of [the Coalition’s] effort is to form a network of stream groups and jumpstart them where they don’t currently exist, such as in Rock Run,” he said. “It would be a permanent lobbying and education forum for stream protection and restoration. Citizen involvement is really what will make a difference – once people understand how the stream works, they can be its eyes and ears.”