US soil for golf course - Developers say local
material 'not good enough'
Date: Wed 20-Oct-1993
Paper Page: 36A
Publication: Daily Nation
BAJAN soil isn't good enough for wide-scale use on the Royal Westmoreland Golf
and Country Club, at St. James.
Yesterday officials of the golf course confirmed that they were "forced
to"
import 12 000 tonnes of a sand/soil mixture called greens-mix from the United
States, after none of the major quarries here could provide the specific
quality.
"We approached all the major quarries and took down quotas and tested
samples,
but we concluded that they were not good enough and would not do for our golf
course," a source said.
He said that the local sand had too many impurities and was not adequate to
use on the golf course. He added they also took samples from other parts of
the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Guyana but came up with nothing. He said
that wherever possible they would try to use local sand and were even going to
use some soon in the building of the bunkers and sand traps of the golf
course.
Earlier this year, Development Manager of Royal Westmoreland, Charles Doggett
said if Barbados intended to construct first-class golf courses, top quality
material would have to be imported.
He said then: "The problem with sand from Barbados and other Caribbean
countries is that it contains large amounts of clay. This tends to compact,
then water has difficulty filtering through.
"However, one local quarry owner is hopping mad at the move, since he was
initially approached to provide the greens-mix.
Managing Director of Springfield Mining Company at Springfield Plantation
Albert Alleyne said yesterday he was contacted in June about providing silica
sand, which contains the grain distribution the golf officials would need.
"They even told me that they would not import, but would wash out some of
the
sand, since they needed large grains to facilitate proper drainage of the golf
course. Fine grains have the tendency to sink to the bottom and conglomerate.
"I told them they could even import a sieve to facilitate their type of
sand,
but they insisted that they would buy it and wash it out," he said.
Alleyne said when he made a check on Monday, he was told that 100 per cent of
the sand requirements were coming from the United States.
"This is unfair to us locals. I gave them so many solutions and they never
got
back to me but went off and imported. This should not be allowed to
happen,"
he said.
Efforts to contact the Minister of Agriculture David Bowen and Permanent
Secretary Ruall Harris proved futile, even though messages were left on
several occasions.
It is however understood that the ministry has not given officials of the golf
course permission to import the greens-mix.