Located five minutes from the Maldives airport, the 18-hole golf course will include luxurious accommodations, which overlook the green fairways and the surrounding reef. The golf course is doubly groundbreaking as it will be built on floating platforms, making it the first floating golf course, and it is also designed to minimize its impact on the surrounding ecosystem. The artificial floating islands will incorporate technologies such as water cooling, water desalination, and the use of floating solar blanket fields. Underwater tunnels will connect the holes and facilities together, while allowing golfers to experience the reef.
Koen Olthuis-led Waterstudio.NL is in charge of the conceptual design of the golf course, while the developer Dutch Docklands is working on the engineering to make the floating golf course possible. Troon Golf, leading developer of golf courses, is working as a technical adviser to the project, which is expected to cost $500 million. The state-of-the-art golf courses are expected to bring new wealth, investment and tourism to the country. Building such a novel tourist attraction will also likely help spur on new floating developments, which they country will likely need as sea levels rise.
Conceptual design by Koen Olthuis Waterstudio.NL/Dutch Docklands
Water use by golf courses is typical area where critics of golf are way misinformed. The vast vast majority of golf courses out there are not hooked to the drinking water supply of a city, simply because the cost would be prohibitive. So generally golf courses use rain or stream water captured in ponds. That water is pumped out of the ponds over the course and the water is either used by the plants, some is lost to evaporation and the rest drains and percolates back into the ponds. Then the cycle happens again. So generally golf courses just use water that’s naturally present in the area.
Some courses are destinations of grey water which are the end point of the sewage treatment system. In this case they provide a wonderful service to the community by using this water and properly reintroducing it into the water cycle.
If you check the statistics, golf courses waste less water per acre ft than private homes…by a lot. Home owners are statistically the worst abusers of water in the world. That’s a fact. Not sure about the herbicides, but your theory sounds plausible.
Shouldn’t golf courses and clubs pay a premium for all that water they take from municipal sources that could go into peoples homes. Especially when you have them in huge desert regions where water is scarce. You can golf in the natural area, only a couple a hundred square feet of the putting green needs grass, the rest can be left to it’s own devices in nature. There are eco golf courses in Australia that have no grass, you carry a piece of synthetic turf around with you for teeing off. Golf isn’t evil but it is an elitist game and boring as shit.
Thanks kaptn, I am now privy to the evils of leisure thanks to your insightful and fact packed comment.
Evil?! Golf is amazing! And I think these three, highly respected interantional design firms, have taken the use of pesticides into consideration, if they’ll use them at all. Im positive they’re exploring all avenues to bring the environmental impact near the zero mark. Considering anything else….now THAT’S ridiculous.
golf courses are an evil which should be banned. The pesticides used on the greens wreck the environment and massively damage coral reefs. This is a ridiculous idea.