Myth: Sharp Park Golf Course created the habitat for the California red-legged frog and the San Francisco garter snake. Without the golf course and its sea wall, Laguna Salada would be too salty for the frog and snake to survive.

Fact: Laguna Salada has always been good habitat for the California red-legged frog and the San Francisco garter snake. Several lines of evidence support this conclusion:

• in 1869, the United States Geologic Survey created a map of Sharp Park and the surrounding areas, before any significant man-made changes occurred at Sharp Park. This map shows that freshwater vegetation fringed Sharp Park’s Laguna Salada: these vegetation types are indicative of salinity levels low-enough for amphibians and reptiles to thrive.

• This map is corroborated by early photos taken at Sharp Park. These photos show Laguna Salada as dump trucks were filling-in some of the wetlands on the property, but they also show that cattails fringed the lagoon: vegetation that cannot survive in saline environments, indicating that the area was suitable habitat for amphibians and reptiles.

• Supporters of Sharp Park argue that the sea wall at Sharp Park created the habitat for the California red-legged frog and San Francisco garter snake by protecting Laguna Salada from ocean flooding. But historical photos show that there was no large sea wall at the course before 1983. The tall, armored sea wall that exists today was not constructed until 1987.

Despite the absence of a sea wall, biological surveys of Sharp Park in the mid-1940s found that the San Francisco garter snake was abundant on the property, but being killed by golfers. It would not be possible for the snake population to be abundant at Sharp Park so soon after golf course construction: unless the population was already thriving there long before the sea wall and course were built.

Myth: Sharp Park makes money for San Francisco and Pacifica.

Fact: San Francisco pours far more money into Sharp Park than it receives. Sharp Park has lost between $30,000 and $300,000 each year for the past seven fiscal years. WEI calculates that Sharp Park has lost $740,000 from 2005 to 2009. The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department’s numbers are even worse, showing a loss of $815,000 between 2005 to 2009 at Sharp Park. San Francisco’s other golf courses suffer for it, because they must subsidize Sharp Park’s losses, robbing other courses of needed maintenance.

But that isn’t all it costs San Francisco to operate Sharp Park: Sharp Park also draws down the capital fund, the open space fund, and general fund. In 2007, the Recreation and Parks Department concluded that these expenses will not be offset by revenue from Sharp Park, collectively resulting in millions of dollars in losses by 2013.

Pacifica earns no direct revenue from Sharp Park at all, and none of the studies conducted to date have shown any indirect revenues from Sharp Park flowing to Pacifica’s city coffers or the surrounding communities.

Myth: Sharp Park golf course is doing everything it can to protect the San Francisco garter snake and California red-legged frog.

Fact: Sharp Park continues to kill red-legged frogs and engage in activities that threaten the San Francisco garter snake. It is abundantly clear that the existing configuration, operation, and maintenance of the golf course is harming both the endangered San Francisco garter snake and the threatened California red-legged frog, and has been doing so since the golf course was constructed.

The earliest biological surveys of Sharp Park occurred in the mid-1940s. Dr. Wade Fox found a dead San Francisco garter snake at that time, and in his field journal noted that the snake was “probably killed by golfers—they probably die frequently in this manner.” Subsequent surveys for the snake found a population decline in the 1970s and 1980s, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the San Francisco garter snake shown below was killed by a lawn mower at Sharp Park in 2005.

California red-legged frogs have been killed on a nearly annual basis at Sharp Park since at least 1992. Every year when the winter rains come, California red-legged frogs breed, lay eggs, and attach them to aquatic vegetation at Sharp Park. But when management drains these waters to eliminate flooding on the golf course, egg masses like the one shown above are exposed to the air, dry out, and an entire generation of frogs can be lost.

Myth: Sharp Park is a popular, well-loved golf course.

Fact: Some golfers may love Sharp Park, but most don’t. Golfers give the poorly maintained course failing grades in almost every category measured by the National Golf Foundation.

Myth: Sharp Park is a historic golf course designed by famous golf architect Alister MacKenzie.

Fact: Sharp Park is not a historic golf course. Alister MacKenzie made his greatest design mistake at Sharp Park, a mistake that remains a pock-mark on his otherwise admirable resume.

In order to create enough dry land to build a golf course, Sharp Park was dredged and filled for fourteen months. However, even this act of hubris could not eliminate the naturally wet conditions at Sharp Park: the golf course’s ceremonial opening day was delayed twice because there was too much water on the course, and the golf course has suffered from flooding ever since.

MacKenzie’s original design has also been irreversibly destroyed by storms and poor course management: seven beach-side holes were destroyed by a massive coastal flood; another hole was destroyed when Highway 1 was constructed; and annual flooding combined with millions of dollars in deferred maintenance has destroyed what remained of MacKenzie’s signature design. In his book “Missing Links,” Golf historian Daniel Wexler therefore concluded that the MacKenzie design has “washed into oblivion” and “no appreciable trace of [MacKenzie’s] strategy remains in play.” If Sharp Park’s original design was restored today it would suffer the same fate, because rising sea levels and increased storm intensity caused by climate change would destroy the course design once more.

There are 26 golf courses on the national register of historic places. Not a one is a MacKenzie-designed course. The City of Sacramento recently redesigned its MacKenzie-designed course because MacKenzie’s original design didn’t meet the modern demands of today’s game. Perhaps some day a MacKenzie-designed course will become an historic landmark, but if that day comes, the course so designated most certainly will not be Sharp Park.

Myth: Sharp Park can remain a low-cost, public golf course.

Fact: The status quo at Sharp Park cannot be maintained: the golf course loses too much money, it causes too much environmental damage, and it imposes too much risk on the surrounding communities each year when the golf course floods. The only way to save Sharp Park is to spend millions of taxpayer dollars and turn it into an elite, expensive course.

Keeping an 18-hole golf course on the property will require massive capital expenditures: money that San Francisco doesn’t have and shouldn’t spend to subsidize golf in San Mateo County when the City is cutting basic neighborhood and community services for the City’s disadvantaged communities. The only way to keep golf at Sharp Park is to spend millions of dollars in federal funding to improve the course.

At minimum, the following capital expenditures will be required to retain an 18-hole golf course at Sharp Park:

• $12-14 million in course improvements (PROS Consulting, 2008 Estimate)
• $32 million in sea wall repair and construction (Bob Batallio, Philip Williams & Associates Environmental Hydrology, 2009 Estimate)
• $4-8 million in environmental permitting costs (Average Costs for Habitat Conservation Planning Permits)
• $8.8 million in water supply construction (San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, 2009 Estimate)

Once these improvements are made, San Francisco will hand Sharp Park over to a private developer. The new, elite private course will need to charge as much as $120 for around of golf. And the course will still flood every year, kill frogs and snakes and contribute to the erosion of Pacifica’s beaches. Keeping golf at Sharp Park means spending millions in federal taxpayer money to allow a few thousand to continue playing on an ultimately an unsustainable course.