Target criticism from elected officials and environmental activists, the French Golf Federation and some national or private journey managers lose patience and apply to show their efforts.
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The rain is starting to fall this Friday, August 19 on the National Golf of Guyancourt, in the Yvelines, to the delight of Lucas Pierré, his superintendent. At the wheel of his cart, he is annoyed to have to justify himself again. “If the service stations to wash the cars are open, I do not see why we would no longer have the right to use water to water our routes,” he explains. Skin tanned by the sun and dressed in a blue sleeveless vest, Lucas Pierré is responsible for the maintenance of the three golf courses on the 150 hectare site.
Since the beginning of the summer, the lack of rain and the heat wave have affected almost all of the territory. For several elected officials and environmental activists, water is a resource far too large to be “wasteful” on golf courses during this period of extreme drought – the most intense that France has known since the middle of the XX e century.
Several actions of activists have multiplied in recent weeks, aimed at denouncing the watering of the routes: on August 16, in Limoges, golf holes were blocked with plants by Rebellion extinction, which had attacked August 10 at two golf courses from the Toulouse agglomeration; On August 22, the Ibiza collective installed a vegetable garden on a Golf Golf from Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
This morning we installed a vegetable garden on a golf green in the Yvelines.
While the episodes of dryer… https://t.co/b8xsu5xdil
Gestures supported by Eric Piolle, the mayor EELV de Grenoble: “When you can no longer water anywhere, that everyone is lacking in water and our lawns are yellow, why can we water the greens golf? “, He rebellious on the set of BFM-TV in July.
Pascal Grizot, the president of the French Golf Federation (FFGOLF), says he understands controversies. “I can accept that watering golf courses can create stir in the public who does not know what a golf course is,” he said, but according to him, “the Attacks that have been made are unfair and, above all, they are very badly informed by policies that do not know what they are talking about “, arguing that the figure of 5,000 cubic meters of water per day advanced by Hendrik Davi, deputy LFI -Nupes des Bouches-du-Rhône, which is however based On a report by the Senate , is wrong.
“This figure includes days of peak, but it is not reality. The average annual water consumption of an 18 -hole golf course is of 50,000 cubic meters per year. “
Eric Piolle does not bother, even if for him the controversy does not only be due to the figures, “it comes from the principle of the use of water. The government protects the richest, because the greens can Continue to be watered, but the population can no longer water their vegetable garden “.
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