The terrible drought affecting the country does not spare the golf courses of France. The many restrictions, depending on the level of alert decided by the prefectures, jeopardize the survival of certain courses. At the Federation, the entire staff is on deck around Christophe Muniesa to try to find solutions and avoid a disaster.
President Pascal Grizot is on the front line to defend the sector in the face of criticism and the stigmatization of certain elected officials and political leaders who do not hesitate to fire red balls at what they consider to be a privilege…
most often in total discrepancy on the use of the resource and the economic reality of these sports companies.
Golf, France
Much more than the long-awaited rain, it is a deluge of prefectural orders that have been falling on France for a week: ban on filling your swimming pool, washing your car, closing public showers on the beaches…
Everyone knows the measures enacted to cope with the water shortage which affects most regions. Inevitably, this crisis is hitting golf courses hard with very severe restrictions governed by agreements between the public authorities and the French Golf Federation (FFG).
They follow a graduated scale of four levels according to the seriousness of the situation estimated by the Departmental Directorates of the Territories and according to the water levels of each basin. It therefore sometimes happens that the alert levels differ for municipalities in the same department.
In the Loiret, the situation thus varies from one basin to another. The golf courses follow the evolution on the site of the prefecture. In Aisses, we are in the red zone on the temporary water use limitation map. This means that the state of “Crisis” has been reached.
“It works by watershed. In Aisses, I can no longer water… Only the greens”, confides Christophe Berthet, the director of the Solognot course. A few kilometers further north, in Limère, in the town of Ardon, the situation is hardly less dramatic.
“We are on heightened alert, so no watering of the fairways but the greens and the departures are preserved. In Donnery, “we are only on alert, so restrictions at night but the fairways can be maintained with restrictions”, explains Maxime Adolphe-Louis, director of the Gaia-Concept golf courses in Limère and Donnery.