Is Disc Golf Right for Leddy Park?
Leddy Park is an acknowledged jewel of a city park. Leddy Park has an amazing lakefront with amazing views of the Adirondack high peaks. Leddy Park includes a sandy beach and picnic area with plenty of shade, BBQ grills and picnic tables and undeveloped woodlands with quiet walking trails. It seems that this wonderful park is perfect, but it is facing a serious threat. The most imminent danger to the park is negative impacts from the Btowndisc golf club proposal to develop a disc golf course in the park’s remaining woodlands. Residents of Burlington need to be aware that only about half of the park’s 75 acres remains as quiet woodland. It is this small amount of remaining woodlands that the Leddypark.org group was formed to protect.
A disc golf course within the woodlands of the park will bring serious negative environmental impact to these few remaining acres of forest land along the shores of Lake Champlain. The potential negative impacts include soil compaction, removal of forest under story for fairways and defoliation from trampling and disc damage to remaining under story vegetation, and further complications to existing erosion problems within the park.
The disc golfers state that, “disc golf doesn’t require large clearings for fairways or planted grass, because players can play through heavily wooded areas.” However, it is precisely this traffic that will be the problem, turning the existing wooded areas in to minimally wooded areas. In addition, potential negative impacts to wildlife in the park are yet to be assessed, as are the potential impacts from increased traffic within the park and surrounding areas. Given these concerns it is difficult to see how disc golf could possibly lead to an improvement in the overall health of Leddy Park, as claimed by the proponents of disc golf.
Disc golfers claim “…installing 18 baskets [really fairways that should be allotted around an acre each] in over 40 acres of under-used park area is easily possible with no cross-over or impact on the miles of already existing walking and hiking trails in the public park.” But there’s a real potential danger to people and property from stray discs. Disc golf is played much like traditional golf, but instead of a golf ball and clubs, players use a disc (smaller, denser and harder than Frisbees). And, much like golf balls in traditional golf, disc flight is not always predictable, nor limited to fairways. Everyone knows, traditional golf is not located in mixed use areas because of the danger from flying golf balls and disc golf should not be located in the woodlands of Leddy Park due to the danger from erratic disc flight and lack of appropriate setback from neighboring properties and walking trails.
Btowndisc proponents claim that “Specific concerns have been easily addressed at other parks across the country and similar techniques will be applied to Leddy Park to ensure short and long-term solutions.” However, a quick search of the internet reveals that many courses around the country, existing and proposed, are fraught with controversy. Existing courses are being shut down or moved due to overuse, erosion, soil compaction, littering and personal and property damage.
The disc golf proponents also like to claim that a “local course in Burlington would decrease the carbon impact of golfers who currently drive 45 minutes to Waterbury….” This claim fails to point out that a disc golf course in Leddy Park would attract far more players from locations further away from Burlington than Waterbury, greatly negating any carbon offset benefit.
Disc golf may be a popular and fun sport and I hope a disc golf course is approved somewhere in Chittenden County, just not within Leddy Park. Residents of Burlington should be highly concerned and vocal about the fact that Leddy Park is not the right location for this activity.
Larry Solt