TTA award w inner
Congratulations to TTA’s 2014 Environmental Stewardship Award Winner,
The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay By Liz Nutter, Managing Editor, Leading Edge Communications (publisher of Tennessee Turfgrass)
“Our
course is a little bit different, in that we run it as a golf course and a nature preserve. They’re not separate; they’re one in the same,” says Paul L. Carter, CGCS, superintendent at The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay. “A golf course can be both, no matter what size it is or where it is located, private or public — you can always do something for the environment.” No doubt, that visionary, yet realistic attitude — embraced by everyone at the course — played a large part in the selec-
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tion of The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay as the 2014 winner of the TTA’s Environmental Stewardship Award. Located in Harrison Bay State Park down a rural, two-lane road in Harrison, TN (about 20 miles northeast of Chattanooga), The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay (BTHB) opened in 1999. Sited on a peninsula that juts out into the Tennessee River, the course is surrounded by both water and heavily wooded land, with 11 holes touching water. Fairways are 419 bermudagrass, and the greens are Champion ultradwarf bermuda-
TENNESSEE TURFGRASS April/may 2015 Email TTA at: tnturfgrassassn@aol.com
grass. Carter has been superintendent there since 2001. “Our environmental focus started in 2005 when the state took us over from our former management firm,” Carter recalls. “Back then, we fertilized and mowed everything. When the state came in, the new focus was on limiting expenses and labor, while helping the environment.”
“Green” efforts on the course Reducing the course’s potential impact on the river and its water quality became an