News Subscribe  to Our Newsletter Sign  up for Email Updates CGF  In the News Press  Inquiries Past  Articles Calendar			CGF,  Audubon team up on golf course by Craig Breon Start with a powerful businessman and a city council  lax in enforcing their own rules, throw in the game of golf and a few  red-legged frogs, and stir the pot with a couple conservation organizations,  and - Voila! - you have the controversy of the Math Institute Golf Course.  Expansion starts in 1997, sans permits John Fry (of Fry's Electronics fame) and one of his associates, Steve  Sorenson, decided some years back that building their own golf course  would be fun. Fry then bought a large property on the outskirts of Morgan  Hill, where a small golf course already existed. John and Steve drove  around the land deciding where the new holes should go, where to place  the trees and where to put the turf. Evidently, these guys really like  turf - because John and Steve's golf course has more turf grass than any  other course in Santa Clara County. Unfortunately,  John and Steve didn't bother to get the permits needed to expand their  golf course. No approval from the Morgan Hill City Council, no Environmental  Impact Report, no permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the  Regional Water Quality Control Board and no public hearings at which neighbors  or local conservationists could discuss the many implications of this  greatly expanded course. They did obtain a permit to grade 40 acres to  improve the existing nine-hole course, but they then graded 150 acres  and doubled the course size. Math institute or PGA  tour? But our story gets weirder. This golf course is supposed to be adjunct  to a math institute Fry intends to build on the same site (which, by the  way, may be a nearly 60,000-square foot structure modeled after the Alhambra,  a Moorish castle in southern Spain - for a rendering, see the Institute's  website . Evidently John and Steve decided that math geeks and a world-class  golf course (over which local golfers have been publicly drooling) go  together like peas and carrots. In reality, Fry seems to have designed  the course not so much for mathematicians as for future PGA tournaments  - although this is not admitted in documents submitted to the City of  Morgan Hill.  Course poses significant environmental problems Here's a short list of problems with the Institute Golf Course, according  to Morgan Hill's own documents: Potentially poisoning local groundwater wells  with levels of nitrogen fertilizer three times higher than drinking  water quality standards (and people in the area do drink the groundwater); Increased local flooding due to runoff from the  course and changes to drainage in the area; Significant impacts on the availability of local  groundwater due to the immense amounts of water needed to maintain the  turf grass on the site; Bulldozing up to and even into Corralitos Creek,  which destroyed habitat for the threatened red-legged frog and other  wildlife. Morgan Hill looks the other way What did the City of Morgan Hill do about this?  The answer is: next to nothing... until recently. The City did order the  work stopped and required the production and approval of an Environmental  Impact Report - but John and Steve rejected the draft of that report,  which described the project's significant impacts as well as potential  violations of the federal Clean Water Act, the California Water Code,  the California Department of Fish and Game Code, and the federal Endangered  Species Act. Around the time that the Morgan  Hill Times editorialized this summer about the outrage of letting  the wealthy run roughshod over the town - and only after Committee for  Green Foothills and Santa  Clara Valley Audubon Society (SCVAS) filed in July a formal code enforcement  complaint against the Institute - did the City take a stronger stance  towards John and Steve. After CGF and SCVAS alerted Morgan Hill that John,  Steve and their friends were indeed using the course (and operating without  required permits), City officials sent the Institute a letter demanding  that they "cease operations." However, even this was toothless,  since the City then turned around in a couple weeks and - again without  public comment or environmental documentation - issued the Institute a  Temporary Use Permit to continue operations. To their credit, the permit  contained conditions that will slightly lessen the environmental impacts  of the project. CGF and Audubon step in to ensure local protections Audubon and CGF have appealed that permit. As  a result of our actions, the Morgan Hill Planning Commission have just  held their first public hearing on the Institute - approximately five  years after the project was started. We will continue to focus on this  issue: commenting on the Environmental Impact Report that is now being  prepared, working with the Institute's neighbors and local activists to  minimize the impacts of the course and maximize its habitat values and  trying to ensure that such a monumental lapse of local control cannot  happen again. While this story may sound flippant, the issue here  is serious. John and Steve have broken a number of laws, and they should  have been stopped and punished. Instead, local resource agencies and,  notably, the Morgan Hill City Council have been asleep at the wheel. As  a result, the neighbors of the Institute and natural resources have suffered.  Perhaps worst of all, it appears that Mr. Fry, his family and his associates  have been trying to influence the City with political and charitable donations.  Unfortunately, we see those tactics used every day at the local, state  and federal levels, but that doesn't mean we should be any less outraged.  What has happened here is wrong. We can try only to make it better - and  keep it from happening again. Craig Breon is the  Executive Director of Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. In his spare  time he chairs the PlanningCommission  in Portola Valley, and teaches an undergraduate course in Environmental  Law and Regulation at Santa Clara University. For more information, see  our Action Alert. Published October 2003 in Green  Footnotes . Page last updated November 13, 2003 .

	Photo by John  Sullivan.