California Golf Trip Lands Obama in a Water-Use Debate - New York Times

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President Obama at the airport in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, before going to the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. â€" With four fund-raisers and an awkward reconciliation with the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, behind him, President Obama returned to a beloved golf oasis here for a weekend getaway with friends.

This time, though, was different. A punishing drought has raised questions about whether such oases can survive, and about the president’s weekend here.

The vast emerald green courses in the area are watered by a disappearing Colorado River and an underground aquifer that has fallen about 55 feet since 1970.

While environmentalists generally support the president, some grumbled that he needed to take up a new hobby or indulge it someplace else.

“President Obama needs to take a mulligan and rethink golfing in Palm Springs in the middle of a drought,” said Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth, using a golfing term that refers to a do-over after a bad shot. “It takes copious amounts of water to maintain a golf course, and it just sends the wrong message to the people of California just as they are being asked to cut back on water use.”

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Interactive Graphic: How Has the Drought Affected California’s Water Use?

On April 1, Gov. Jerry Brown of California ordered a 25 percent statewide reduction in water consumption, and some places were forced to cut back even more. Some affluent towns may run out of water entirely, farmers have been forced to fallow thousands of acres, and state leaders like Mr. Brown have taken symbolic steps like letting the grass go brown at their houses.

Now, anyone who hoses down a car or sidewalk is likely to get the same stares as dog walkers in Central Park who refuse to clean up after their pets.

Some people have even begun a social media campaign to shame neighbors who waste water and to put the spotlight on celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand whose enormous lawns around their mansions require huge amounts of water to maintain.

Amid this crisis, Air Force One banked out of a crystalline blue sky and landed in what boosters have long described as “America’s desert oasis.” Having already exercised for nearly an hour in the gym of the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, the president â€" wearing a striped shirt with sleeves rolled up, light trousers and brown shoes â€" jogged down the stairs and posed for pictures with Representative Raul Ruiz and his two infant daughters. He was then driven through blocked streets to Sunnylands, the former Annenberg estate where political leaders and celebrities have come to rest and meet for decades.

The Palm Springs area has the highest concentration of golf courses in California, with 122 in the Coachella Valley, where Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs both sit, said Craig Kessler, the government affairs director for the Southern California Golf Association.

Mr. Kessler said golf courses in the Coachella Valley were reducing their dependence on dwindling groundwater supplies, making the game more sustainable in the area. But courses are making those reductions in part by switching to water supplied by the Colorado River, which is also under stress.

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Graphic: Your Contribution to the California Drought

Ed Osann, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s water team, said the golf course industry in the Palm Springs region must do far more to reduce water consumption and switch to more sustainable water sources.

“We don’t advocate that any golfer stop playing golf because of the drought,” Mr. Osann said. “But drought or no drought, all landscape water use in California, including golf courses, needs to get more efficient.”

Local officials have promised substantial cutbacks in water use, and Palm Springs is digging up the grassy median on the road into town that once served as a verdant symbol of miraculous bounty amid scarcity. The city is paying residents to replace lawns with rocks and desert plants.

Still, the area remains a place of conspicuous water consumption, with burbling fountains, towering trees, bright flowers and oasislike lakes.

Residents of Palm Springs, which is next to Rancho Mirage, use more than twice as much water as the state average â€" 201 gallons per day per person. The high use has prompted state officials to demand that the region cut water use by 36 percent from 2013 levels, among the toughest requirements in the state.

The water crisis has led to changes at Sunnylands. A conference center where reporters were cloistered Saturday was surrounded by desert greenery in place of the usual greensward. The golf course’s fairways have been significantly narrowed, with huge sections of turf removed in favor of desert expanses.

“Sunnylands demonstrates nearly all of the best practices about how to conduct landscaping and golf in a desert,” said Mr. Kessler, who added that he saw nothing amiss in Mr. Obama’s decision to golf here. “As Californians, we recognize that Mother Nature has given us a bit of a setback, but that does not mean we have to stop playing a game we love.”

Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, said the president could have used his vacation to remind golfers that unless things changed, they might need only a sand wedge in their bags, because “the game will soon be played in one giant sand trap.”