Guest Column: It’s time to clear the creek at San Vicente Golf Course

I have lived in San Diego Country Estates since 1997. I now live in an older home right on the golf course on hole #4. We originally came to live here in our retirement just for the golf and have been members of the San Vicente Golf Club since first buying.

We have seen many changes out here, some good and some bad. The community demographics gradually changed from mostly a retirement community to more of a bedroom community with many more young people and families.

That’s a very good thing but we need more recreational facilities for all the kids: Skatepark, recreational center, softball diamond/soccer field, etcetera.

The Association management staff has grown substantially over the years with no appreciable increase in their duties. With computers and subcontracting, it’s probably even easier. The accounting is questionable. The restaurant takes in substantial gross revenue, pays no rent and no electricity, and yet makes little or no profit.

Plus, as homeowners (part-owners of the bar, restaurant and other facilities), prices for food and drink should be lower than anywhere else we could eat or drink. Something is not right! However, I digress.

The facilities themselves have undergone many changes: Remodeling, updating, pickleball and golf course renovation. I believe that if you aren’t continually improving things, they are inherently going downhill.

While the golf course renovation was not satisfactory to many people, it was needed. Unfortunately, the remodeling architect was allowed to go unchecked and he turned our unique, friendly, country course into a very difficult links-style course with nowhere near the character of the old course. Such is life and progress. What’s done is done.

What I’m writing about here is in regards to a fairly recent problem that is easily fixable. For decades, the creek that ran alongside hole #11, across its fairway and then across the #16 fairway, was a flowing stream running mostly over a concrete culvert.

Unfortunately, reeds were allowed to choke off this stream. With time, trees even grew in the impenetrable ditch. Recent attempts to mitigate this problem have been stymied by San Diego County (it would destroy the “habitat”) and perhaps a lack of effort by our management.

The situation is intolerable: Those who live in the condos alongside #11 used to have a golf course view but now they only see a curtain of green.

Here are the problems: It’s a protective breeding ground for mosquitoes; it takes a lot of water (a valuable resource for everyone) that gets sucked up into the undesirable vegetation, which also creates a fire hazard; it’s an eyesore; it makes the golf course on holes #11 and #16 much more difficult to play as well as ugly; and while creating a habitat that wasn’t there before, we’re prevented from creating an even better habitat with a flowing stream, scenic rocks and boulders with small, occasional pools and places for fish, frogs and other life.

It could be beautiful instead of an eyesore. Just cutting the reeds is counterproductive. It’s a big effort that takes a lot of manpower, doesn’t last and actually encourages their growth. They need to be eliminated, roots and all, and make a sustainable, maintenance-free and beautiful habitat.

The solution is simple. Plow it all up with a bulldozer, excavator and backhoe; slightly build up the banks and landscape it with boulders, rocks and gravel, with occasional shallow pools for mosquito fish.

It would be a beautiful habitat for many creatures. Mitigation of the problem area right before the bridge on hole #11 could also be easily addressed at this time. This is an easy fix that could be done over time.

It would be a great improvement for the golf course and give back the golf course views to the condos that bought there and paid extra for those golf course views. It wouldn’t be destroying a habitat, but rather restoring and even improving the pre-existing habitat.

There’s been rumors for several years that this will be done but nothing has happened and the lack of transparency has left us all in the dark.

Our management needs to more aggressively make the argument to the County and their environmental agency. It needs to be done.

Franck has lived in San Diego Country Estates since 1997.