Golf is one of the most popular sports in America.  Everywhere you go, golf courses are popping up.  Many people enjoy this sport and the beautiful landscape of the courses, but this all comes at the expense of the environment and water supplies.  There are over 18,000 golf courses in the United States, more than half of the world’s golf courses.  These golf courses cover more than 1.7 million acres of land which require plenty of water to irrigate. 4 billion gallons of water EVERY DAY are used to irrigate golf courses in the United States alone!

With this extreme usage of public water supplies, the golf courses use pesticides and fertilizers that run off into the surrounding environments and communities.  Studies have found that farmers and greens keepers have an unusually high percentage of lymphoma related deaths, which could also be true for the surrounding communities.  Since golf is a $49 billion dollar industry in the US, lawmakers have much less incentive to regulate the environmental impacts of the sport.  But, until the government applies more strict regulation to the golf industry, the best way to keep the public safe is to filter all their public drinking and bathing water.

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