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Environmental Management of Club Goods

A club good is a good that is classified as excludable but non-rivalrous, which often leads to highly desirable land being excluded to use by only high-paying citizens. [1] Examples of club goods include, but are not limited to: country clubs, private golf courses, amusement parks, movie theaters, private beaches, members-only grocery stores, and even cable tv. Managing these club goods can be very difficult for city planners and environmental agencies, due to the complicated issue of allocating costs and benefits of a club good. Obviously, all or nearly all of the benefits of a club good are limited to those who can afford to use them, but the issue arises in scenarios where the costs of operating a public good fall onto people who do not have access to the good at all. When it comes to environment management, the four largest club goods that cause particular trouble are country clubs, golf courses, private beaches, and amusement parks.

Country Clubs A country club can be defined as a privately owned piece of land that offers various recreation and entertainment services to an exclusive group of paying members [2]. The average cost to join a country club in the United States can range from $500 to $20,000, which doesn’t even include the monthly fee that many clubs charge which averages between $50-$1,000 per month. The most exclusive clubs in the United States charge up to $500,000 to join [3], only if you’ve been lucky enough to receive an invitation. Country clubs most commonly include swimming pools, tennis courts, and golf courses.

Private Golf Courses The line between country clubs and private golf courses has thinned to the point that is essentially non-existent due to the fact that almost every private country club in America has a golf course. There are 10,619 golf courses in the United States as of 2021 [4], and in 2009 private golf courses pulled in $3,277,000 in revenue after $3,204,500 in expenses. [5] According to the National Golf Foundation, golf reaches over 100 million Americans, meaning that about 1/3 of Americans either play or watch golf. [6] The biggest concerns of environmental management of golf courses are water use, habitat conservation, and chemical runoff.

Private Beaches The United States has 95,471 miles of shoreline [7], and about 70% of that is privately owned [17]. Private ownership doesn’t always equate to exclusive beaches, but for the vast majority of shoreline in the United States private beaches are excluded to paying users of the resorts or condominiums operated by the owners of the beach. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) holds the main role of upholding clean environmental standards for all US beaches, whether privately or publicly owned. Their biggest concerns in monitoring beaches are habitat protection, pollution, and oil spills. [8] Although many private beach owners will say they care about the environment, they are merely keeping their beaches clean in order to avoid fines or to receive subsidies for outstanding environmental standards. This is all good, except for the issue of non-beach users incurring the costs to keep beaches clean. All taxpayers pay in to the EPA’s subsidies as well as the transaction costs of all their enforcement. This means an average American is paying annually to uphold a beach that they could be excluded from using.

Amusement Parks An Amusement park is defined as a commercially operated park that has various devices for entertainment such as merry-go-rounds and roller coaster, and usually includes booths for the sale of food and drink. [9] There are over 400 amusement parks in the United States [10] that pull in a total of around 22 billion dollars in annual revenue [10]. The biggest issues in environmental manage for amusement parks are habitat loss and pollution.

Water Use The biggest issue for environmental management of club goods’ water usage is golf courses. Golf Courses use an average of 2.08 billion gallons of water daily[11]. The water use in irrigating a golf course varies greatly by region; the southwest region of the United States uses over 10 times the amount of water per course than the northeast region[11]. Obviously, this is the result of geography and climate, due to the southwest’s low annual rainfall, and general lack of large bodies of water in comparison to other regions of the United States. The issue of environmental management of club goods becomes extremely heated in the southwest region, because the region experiences frequent drought, despite golf courses in the region guzzling about 150 billion gallons of water annually. The owners of golf courses in this region pay high prices for irrigating their courses, which is in turn reflected in the costs of membership to these clubs. The high cost of these clubs makes them even more exclusive, which denies an even greater number of citizens access to this water. This creates tension between income classes as low and middle class citizens are subject to very strict water rules during a drought, while upper-class citizens can use billions of gallons for a round of golf. The solution to this issue is certainly not simple, but it essentially comes down to limiting or eliminating the costs paid by non-users of club goods in order to maintain club goods. This will naturally result in country clubs and its members having to pay far more for their operations, with many of these new costs coming in increased cost of water use. This is very difficult for American governments and municipalities because many of their large donors and political supporters are members or owners of high end country clubs. Despite potentially large support from the masses, shifting costs from non-users to members of private clubs could be a fatal mistake for anyone looking to make a career in politics.

Land Use All people desire some amount of greenspace in order to make their lives more enjoyable. Some city-folk may only desire a small park down the block that services hundreds of other people, while other people may desire multi-acre yards or even larger pieces of land for hunting and other recreation. Greenspace can be defined as a piece of property set aside from urban development with trees or other vegetation intended for recreation or aesthetic purposes. [12] Greenspace is traditionally an enemy to urban developers, who could very easily generate millions of dollars by developing over the less-profitable greenspace. Governments frequently offer tax breaks on desired greenspaces and zone them in order to prevent developments from taking away people’s desired greenspace. However, economic development is good for all people in its creation of jobs and other services such as entertainment or industry. Governments balance the amount desired greenspace with the desired development through polling and other survey methods in order to maintain a balance between greenspace and development. Golf courses are constantly making efforts to shift this balance in favor of profit, even if development on the land would be more suitable for the community. In theory, golf clubs should be paying very high property taxes, especially the ones located in or near large urban centers. However, many golf clubs can avoid these high taxes by using state laws that allow certain areas to be zoned as open space in order to protect greenspace from unwanted development. [13] These laws are only effective in 23 US states, and were probably very popular when they were passed back in the 1980s and 1990s. However, they have created a dynamic in which golf courses can profit above the levels they would if their land was taxed based on its value to developers. Again, it is this fine line between encouraging development and protecting greenspace, and in the many states where golf courses are too exclusive and use too much water, the desire for golf courses to be protected as greenspace is dwindling.

Pollution Pollution is a very general issue that is undesirable for all people. The EPA has many rules and regulations that prevent pollution, and these laws affect both public and private enterprises. Golf clubs, due to their exclusivity and high value on aesthetics, are among the cleanest places on earth when it comes to trash pollution. However, the amount of fertilizer in the ground and surrounding water is a huge issue. The World Watch Institute estimates that 6 times more fertilizer is used on golf courses than on agricultural land [14], which is perceived as a common source of runoff pollution. The University of Iowa College of Medicine did an interesting study in which they found that golf course superintendents have disproportionately high numbers of death from brain cancer and non-Hodgkins lymphoma, both signs of pesticide poisoning. [14] It is extremely costly for the EPA to crack down on this fertilizer and pesticide runoff, due to the large number of golf courses, the unwillingness of course owners to allow regular testing, and inability of golf clubs to maintain their beauty without use of fertilizers. Golf courses are not the only public good contributing to global pollution. Public beaches contribute plenty of waste into the already heavily-polluted ocean. The main source of pollution from public beaches is littering, which leaves plastics and other non-degradable materials to be swept into the ocean. [8] Other beach recreation, namely boating, contributes to ocean pollution by discharging waste such as litter, fishing equipment, and polluted water from on-board facilities. [8] Wastewater runoff into the ocean comes from all over the world, but increased private developments along the coast only add to this problem. Amusement parks also suffer from littering, but it is often confined to the park’s boundaries. This incurs additional janitorial costs to the park, but rarely has a large impact on trash pollution in the area. The waste from amusement parks, however, does contribute largely to landfill overflows, which is a growing problem around the world. The costs to update landfills to account for increased waste will be incurred on all taxpayers, regardless of whether or not they have the money to frequent amusement parks or other club goods that create large amounts of waste.

Habitat Loss Habitat loss is a major issue concerning golf clubs, private beaches, and amusement parks. The Audubon Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses (ACSP) assists the golfing industry with maintaining good environmental practices. A large portion of their work is dedicated to protecting wildlife habitat in the building and upkeep of golf courses. They have a large number of rules and guidelines for doing this that include but are not limited to: training employees on the location of important land, maintaining wildlife habitat in at least 50% of minimally used land, maintain water sources with conditions suitable for aquatic life, naturalize any out-of-bounds areas of the course so that wildlife can live unobstructed, and protecting endangered or threatened species’ habitats with designated fencing and other buffers to prevent any disturbance. [15] Human development on beaches has also been a huge contributor to habitat loss. The job of managing habitat loss on beaches is shared between the EPA (who have overarching authority to protect environmental standards in the US) and the Fish and Wildlife Service, who specifically are charged with protection endangered species under the endangered species act. [16] The only real way to prevent habitat destruction is by marking off designated areas along beaches that are off-limits for any human activity. These designated areas are not necessarily profitable for the developers who own the beaches, because no one is paying to use that land. However, the potential for tourists to see and engage with wildlife at the beach can be a selling point to make their property more valuable.

Conclusions Club goods, just like many other economic enterprises, often require intense environmental management. Managing the environmental footprint of club goods often incurs costs to taxpayers or members of the community, while the benefits are excluded to the members of the club. This leads to non-users of club goods being unhappy, while owners of club goods are able to profit at levels that are higher than they would be if the costs remained fully within the club. Protecting greenspace is universally accepted as a good thing in moderation, but when laws are used to protect exclusive greenspace, those excluded from said greenspace are often left unhappy. Arguably the biggest issue of environmental management of club goods comes with water usage. Although private golf courses can afford the large costs of irrigation by raising members’ rates, the large amount of water they use increases the cost of drinking water that is a necessity for other citizens within the course’s municipality.

Citations: 1.	“Club good.” Oxford Dictionaries – dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar. Accessed April 23, 2021. 2.	“Country club.” Oxford Dictionaries -- dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar. Accessed April 23, 2021. 3.	“How much does a Country Club membership cost?” (2018). Howmuchisit.org staff, Howmuchisit.org. Accessed April 23, 2021. 4.	“Golf Courses and Country Club Industry in the US.” (2021). IBISWorld. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/golf-courses-country-clubs-industry. Accessed April 23, 2021. 5.	“Operating and Financial Performance Profiles of 18-hole Golf Facilities in the U.S.” (2010). National Golf Foundation (NGF). Accessed April 23, 2021. 6.	https://www.ngf.org/golf-industry-research/ Accessed April 23, 2021 7.	“How Long is the US Shoreline” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/shorelength. Accessed April 23, 2021. 8.	“EPA’s role in Protecting Beaches” (2019). United States Environmental Protection Agency. https://www.epa.gov/beaches/learn-epas-role-protecting-beaches. Accessed April 23, 2021 9.	“Amusement Park.” Oxford Dictionaries – dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar. Accessed April 23, 2021. 10.	“Amusement and Theme Parks – Statistics and Facts.” Lange, David. (2021). Statistica. https://www.statista.com/topics/2805/amusement-and-theme-parks. Accessed April 23, 2021 11.	“Golf Course Environmental Profile” (2009). Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA). Environmental Institute for Golf. Accessed April 23, 2021. 12.	“Greenspace.” Oxford Dictionaries – dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar. Accessed April 23, 2021. 13.	Pinho, Rute. “Property Tax on Golf Courses.” (2013). OLR Research Report. Accessed April 23, 2021. 14.	Rees, Efion. “Taking a Swing at Golf.” (2008). Ecologist. Volume 38, issue 6. Pages: 42-45. 15.	“Environmental Management Practices for Golf Courses.” (2010). Audubon International. https://auduboninternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/G_E-Environmental-Management-Guidelines-for-Golf.pdf. Accessed April 23, 2021. 16.	https://www.fws.gov/international/laws-treaties-agreements/us-conservation-laws/endangered-species-act.html 17.	“Who owns the beach?” (2005). On the Commons. http://www.onthecommons.org/who-owns-beach#sthash.xAAVM54v.dpbs accessed April 23, 2021.