Northwest TURFGRASS TOPICS
MAY 1979

PUYALLUP, WASHINGTON

VOL. 22 - NO. 1

PESTICIDES AND CANCER
The President's
Corner

ED.NOTE: There are too many instances today where
scientific facts are ignored because of uninformed people
and the lapping up of hysterical propaganda. You and I will
talk to each other about the safety of materials, but we often
do not talk to the right people to get their attention. It is
about time that each of us speaks out to influential ears who
will listen with regard to these issues. Not a single one of us
would wish to use materials in the environment that would
harm our fellow human beings knowingly or to pollute this
environment that could possibly make our stay and
generations to follow on this Earth short-lived.
Just recently silvex and 2,4,5-T have been suspended from
use by the Environmental Protection Agency. The horrible
tragedy of two good herbicides has occurred through the
manipulation of phony statistics and is another "amino
triazole cranberry situation" conjured up by EPA to satisfy
a few brash politicians and environmental activists who
want to abolish all pesticides in sight. I think if you will read
carefully the following article which is a transcript of a
speech which was delivered by Dr. Richard Ellerby, MD,
Physician and Surgeon of Internal Medicine and Oncology
on May 24 of last year, it will help to explain some of the
(Continued on p. 4, col. I)

§

By Joe Pottenger

I would like to say"Hi" again to all the members of the
NTA and send a special welcome to our new members. 1
guess the ground is all thawed from the cold winter and all
the broken pipes repaired. We are all busy on our jobs
keeping everyone happy going 8 to 16 hours per day. Wait
just a minute! Just don't get too busy and forget the Turf
Field Day on June 26 at Puyallup. We need to go and see
what has been done and is ongoing for our benefit.
1 hope everyone is trying to sign up new members for the
Turfgrass Association. You know there is a prize being given
again this year for the person who signs up the most new
members.
Don't forget the NTA conference coming up September
25, 26 and 27, 1979. There will be some great things
happening at Port Ludlow and I am sure you will profit
tremendously by attending.
The
Northwest
Association
of
Golf
Course
Superintendents on the Coast is trying to generate new
money for turfgrass research through a car raffle. All of the
golf courses in the state will participate in selling tickets for
this raffle and whenever you are asked to buy, be generous
and help to support a worthy cause.
I wish everyone well and hope you have a good summer.

MEMBERSHIP IS THE KEY
TO AN ORGANIZATION'S SUCCESS
Without membership, organizations would not exist.
There are many benefits in belonging to the NTA and you
too can help advance the technology and recognition of the
turfgrass industry. A valuable prize will be awarded the
individual who brings in the most new members in 1979. Use
the blank below to sign up your new member. Additional
application forms can be obtained from John Monson or
the Editor.
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATON FORM
Name of Applicant
Address
City

State

Zip

Type of business or firm (Individual, school, golf course,
park, cemetery, etc.)

Recommended by
Northwest Turfgrass Association Membership Dues
$30.00/year.
Make check payable to Northwest Turfgrass Association
and mail to:
John Monson, Treasurer
P.O. box 274, Redmond, WA 98052
Dues include: 1) reduced conference registration, 2)
Turfgrass Topics, and other mailings.

APPLICATION OF AQUATIC
PESTICIDES
The Washington State Department of Agriculture has
approved an administrative order restricting the use of
pesticides labelled for application onto or into water. The
amended regulations are a result of recent hearings where
testimony indicated increasing concern over possible misuse
of aquatic pesticides.
The order that will be effective May 10 will restrict the use
of all pesticide formulations labelled for application onto or
into water to control pests in or on water, except those
labelled only for use in swimming pools; wholly impounded
ornamental pools and fountains; aquariums; closed
plumbing and sewage systems; enclosed food processing
systems; air conditioners and humidifiers; and cooling
towers. The restricted use pesticides can now only be sold by
licensed pesticide dealers and may be purchased and applied
only by certified applicators.
Readers of Turfgrass Topics residing outside of the State
of Washington should immediately contact your State
Department of Agriculture to determine your status on
aquatic pesticide application.
The Washington State University Cooperative Extention
Service will be conducting two aquatic weed control
seminars in May. The aquatics examination will be given by
Washington State Department of Agriculture personnel
following the seminar.
The program, to be presented by Roland Portman and
Bob Parker, will consist of three parts: 1) definition of terms
used in aquatic weed control; 2) weed identification
'problems and chemical control; and 3) mosquitoes,
swimmer's itch, etc.
The two seminars will be conducted as follows: May 7,
Moses Lake, Big Bend Community College - 8:00 a.m. to 5
p.m. No registration fee. May 8, Everett Holiday Inn, 101128th St. (Take Exit 186 from 1-5). There will be a
registration fee for the Everett seminar. To pre-register, send
a check for $5.00 to the Conference Office, Cooperative
Extension Service, 323 Ag Service Building, Washington
State University, Pullman, WA 99164. Registrations will be
accepted at the door from 8:00 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. only at a
cost of $7.50.
Those of you who are concerned with the use of aquatic
pesticides in any of your areas should take advantage of
either of these two seminars.

Si
LILLYTMILLER
Portland
256-4600

Controlled Release
FERTILIZERS
also
SEEDS & CHEMICALS
Seattle

Spokane

762-0818

922-3333

Water And Its Uses
By Roy L. Goss
The short water situation two years ago brought into
focus more clearly the problems that face us in the future
with regard to available water. According to Dr. J.R.
Watson, only 1% of the Earth's water is available for use. the
rest is tied up in polar ice caps and with the oceans and seas
which is not considered immediately usable. To more clearly
bring the water situation into focus Herb Schulbach and
Tom Aldrich from the University of California published in
the Fall, 1978 edition of Soil and Water the water necessary
to produce food. Part of the table is reproduced below to
give you an idea of what is required for food production:
Estimated Crop Water Requirements
to Produce Quantities of Selected Foods

Crop

Yield
lb/Acre

Water Use
Acre Ft/Acre

Beans, Green
Cabbage
Carrots
Celery
Corn (ear)
Cucumbers
Lettuce
Onions
Potatoes
Spinach
Tomatoes (process)

10,000
25,000
30,000
60,000
8,000
25,000
28,000
40,000
40,000
16,000
50,000

3
3
3
4
3
3
2
2
3
3
3.5

98
39
33
22
122
39
23
16
24
61
23

Apples
Apricot
Cantaloupe
Cherries
Grapefruit
Oranges
Prunes, Dried
Watermelon
Grapes

20,000
12,000
16,000
5,000
25,000
20,000
4,000
20,000
14,000

3
3.5
2.5
3.5
4
4
3.5
3
3

49
95
51
358
52
65
285
49
70

Corn
Wheat Bread
Rice
Beans, Dry
Almonds (meats)
Walnuts (meats)
Margarine
Sugar (Beets)
Milk
Beef (Live)
(Dressed)
Pork
Bacon
Chicken
Egg

6,000
4,000
4,000
2,000
1,500
2,000
400
9,000
10,000
500
250

3
1.5
3.5
2
3
4
4
3.5
4
4
4

163
122
285
326
188
325
2962
127
130

Gal/Water
per lb/Food

5214
1630
1630
815
544

Further information presented by these writers indicated
that it requires 4,533 gallons of water to grow the daily food
requirements for one person. For one year this is equal to
1,641,405 gallons, or 5.08 acre feet. This is in addition to
each individual's average daily needs of 223 gallons, so you
can see this adds to a whopping water situation. And, you
can imagine that with each additional person that consumes
water and food, someone has to come up with that
additional 5 acre feet of water per year. It appears, then, that
(Continued

on p. 9. col. 2)

WINTER DAMAGE SEVERE
T H R O U G H O U T PACIFIC
NORTHWEST
Prolonged cold weather t h r o u g h o u t the Pacific
Northwest during the winter of 1978-1979 caused severe
damage to many turfgrasss areas. The damage ranked from
minor to severe. The chief damage was caused to playfields
and golf courses where play was permitted on frozen ground
during the freezeup. I have examined some golf courses
which have putting greens with as little as 5% green grass on
them following the spring greenup. Damage to eastern
Washington golf courses was only moderate and was caused
chiefly by ice damage. In most areas, however, some areas in
the Columbia Basin experienced severe desiccation losses
where snow cover was blown from the putting greens.
In western Washington there was no snow cover
essentially most of the time during the extreme freezeup and
due to desiccating winds and low temperatures, extensive
loss of Poa annua occured. It is interesting to note that
little or no bentgrass was lost at all during the winter of 19781979 in western Washington. The loss was Poa annua. I have
made this observation from British Columbia throughout
western Washington that the bentgrasses got by with little or
no damage whereas the Poa annua was badly burned. I
would think with the tools that we have today and the
knowledge that we have that concerted efforts would be
tackled by anyone to convert putting greens especially to
bentgrasses to help protect themselves during winters such
as we have experienced.
Now what can we do to prevent such occurrences again?
First of all, the plants need water. The soil is frozen, no water
can be translocated from the roots to the crown tissue and
leaves; hence, those portions dry out and die. Without snow
cover there is no moisture. The only viable solution is to find
water in any manner that you can. It would appear
unreasonable in many instances to charge up an entire
irrigation system to put a small amount of water (ice cover)
over grass surfaces. This could result in severe economic
losses from damaged pipe, valves, etc. It would appear to be
more reasonable to use large sprayers and spray up to 10
gallons of water per 1000 sq. ft. per application on these
surfaces to add moisture and even a very thin ice layer to
help protect crowns and leaves. Certainly plastic covers
would do the job but there is considerable expense and time
involved there as well and the problem of keeping the plastic
on the grass surfaces.
I am sure that all of you who have experienced this severe
desiccation are vigorously aerifying, verticutting, spiking,
overseeding and topdressing to hasten the recovery of these
greens as fast as possible.
I have recommended to a number of golf courses to use a
mixture of turftype perennial ryegrass and your choice of
bentgrass for overseeding badly damaged greens and tees.
The ryegrass should germinate at lower temperatures and
make some early growth and help to protect the less
vigorous bentgrass seedlings while the greens are being
played. Of course, the best technique is to take the greens out
of play until a satisfactory cover has developed. This is not
always practical nor allowed, hence the ryegrasses will give
some protection. Mowing heights should be raised at least
1/16 inch to allow satisfactory establishment for the
seedlings. This, of course, will make the greens putt slower,
but when there is little or no grass, the speed should be there
anyway.

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Some of the damage in both eastern and western parts of
the Pacific Northwest was caused by winter diseases
including Typhula snowmold and Fusarium patch disease
and in some cases, both. The areas west of the Cascade
Mountains experienced more loss ivomFusarium
patch
than usual and it can be assumed that infected areas that
would normally recover died due to winter stress while the
grass was in a weakened condition from disease attack.
I would recommend that any time the soil and grass is
frozen hard for a period of more than 4 to 5 days without
snow cover and desiccating conditions that some water be
added to these areas. We cannot wait for a warm spell nor be
sure when it will happen.This year it was nearly two months
in western Washington and of course much longer in eastern; hence, the extensive damage.
I hope that all of your turfgrass areas can be recovered
quickly and that you have the best conditions for this year.

(Continued from p. I. col. I )

bumbling that is being perpretrated on us by selected few
who have the power.
Dr. Ellerby is president of the Oregon Society of Clinical
Oncology, member of the Oregon Cancer Society's
Education committee, chairman of Multnomah County
Cancer Society's Education Committee and clinical
instructor of medicine at the University of Oregon Medical
School. This article further has been borrowed from Pest
Control Progress, February , 1979.
Phenoxy herbicides are not new. They were invented back
in the'40's and licensed in 1948. There have been over 50,000
papers written on the various aspects of phenoxy herbicides.
1 think estimates in some of the literature are that you have
at least 5 million pounds produced per year 2,4,5-T and only
about one-tenth of that is used on the forest. For a
comparable example comparing the 50,000 pounds in the
forest there are over 2,000,000 pounds used on rice alone in
the southeast part of the country. So they're used directly on
food crops. Internationally, it's mainly used on food crops
rather than on forests. There are over 400 registered
products containing the phenoxy herbicides and we have
many comparable chemicals that are quite similar
chemically to the phenoxy herbicide. You take things like
Phisohex soap that we use in our sugical detergents, acne
preparations, etc, so the number of products that are indeed
related are infinite.
The controversy really has been over the interpretation of
data of toxicology studies. 1 don't want to get into them in
great detail other than to say that our toxicology studies are
performed on all chemicals and we give the chemical
^compound to the animal until it becomes toxic, obviously.
We can compute from that the amounts that are needed to
kill half the animals, 10 per cent, whatever Autopsy studies
are done on all the animals and the results are derived on
that one specific animal. The key point is that the results are
valuable for that one specific animal and that one specific
animal only. We cannot extrapolate from a CH3-up mouse
to any other mouse because the result in another mouse
likely will be different. And in fact, we have found in our
studies, that the variance between species can be by a factor
of 10 to the 15th, which is ten with 14 other zeroes after it, in
dosages between like species. So some species may be totally
insensitive to the same compound.
This is where we get into problems basically, I think, in
most of our controversies we have seen. And that is when
people try to extrapolate from one animal to the human and
this is where our FDA gets into trouble, because time and
time again they've made announcements based on
extrapolations. I recently returned from a Stanford meeting
in which one of the scientists there stated, and had slides to
prove, that every single announcement the FDA has made in
the last decade has been incorrect. Every single one. He
listed them and put them on slides and went all the way back
to one that we saw here. I remember at the medical school
when the FDA announced and they first got their
indubitable privileges that cranberries cause cancer in the
state of Oregon. I think most of you will remember that.
That kind of faded away and nobody heard anything about
it except for all those cranberry farmers who went bankrupt
that year. They've announced things recently like reserpine,
a high blood pressure medicine, causes breast cancer. They
had to be told that a group of patients with breast cancer
commonly are hypertensive, therefore commonly treated
with reserpine— not a cause and effect, not at all. They said
oral antidiabetic agents caused heart attacks and that they

wanted them taken off the market. They had to be told that
patients with diabetes have heart disease. And the FDA said
female hormones cause cancer— most people still think that
female hormones cause cancer. The British have shown on
10,000 patients on female hormones that they have a lower
incidence of cancer. The FDA study was on seven patients,
not 10,000! Cyclamates and saccharin are another example.
FDA took one animal species and made a determination.
Seven international studies have shown a lower than
average incidence of bladder cancer in humans taking
cyclamates in saccharin. Therefore, if you can go by the
human studies, you would manditorily require all humans
to take cyclamates in saccharin by the same FDA law.
We get into one problem after another in testing our hair
dyes, artificial dyes— one thing with different animals
extrapolated all the way to the human the public gets
confused. They hear our federal government telling us one
thing and our scientists sitting there with their mouths
hanging open with no access to the press. For example, there
was a recent comment of April 12 by the EPA on an RPAR
comment on 2,4,5-T and in that they quoted a study on two
different mice, The C3HF and the 17G mouse, which we
raised specifically because they develop tumors. And as a
classic example in the 17G male mouse on this study who
had received nothing, 78 percent of them developed tumors.
When they received 2,4,5-T, 75 per cent developed tumors
which was 3 percent less. Of the female mice that developed
it, when they developed the tumor their average survival was
641 days. If they didn't develop a tumor, their average
survival was 569 days. You can't make a conclusion from
this animal species. In fact, those of us who dealt with these
species in our own studies in the field of medical oncology,
which is where I am and where I've done years of research,
were beginning to doubt the use of this animal species
because it has such a high tumor incidence. But the key there
is a tumor does not mean cancer. Many of these are benign
tumors—not harmful. The animal lives with these and has a
whole variety of them. And when we see a variety of tumors
resulting in animals when they're treated with a chemical,
this means likely that the chemical is not carcinogenic or
cancer-causing. It is likely a co-carcinogen, which means it
will potentiate the development of an already erratic species.
Ten per cent of the chemicals we test are co-carcinogenic. All
of our vitamins can be classified as such, so we cannot
extrapolate that kind of data and get any kind of result at all
other than an erratic one, In humans, toxicology studies are
done on every single drug that we have administered. This
goes all the way back to simple old table salt right on the
table. In our own serum we have 0.9 per cent sodium
chloride or table salt. If you increase that by one tenth of one
per cent, we'd all have siezures and die. We cannot tolerate a
higher level of sodium chloride.
Another classic example in humans is a chemical
compound developed by the Germans around the World
War 1 era. It has the same gross effect on Toxicology studies
as does rat poison and it will cause hemorrhage and the rat
will die. In animals, it will cause malformations and
abortions, so again, a very common thing. It is oncogenic,
the animals will develop tumors when treated by this
chemical. In humans it's the number one killer of all time, it's
far beyond strychnine, arsenic and botulism. It aggravates
heart disease, brain disease, kidney disease and lung disease.
If you place it on the lining of the mouth it can cause an
erosion of the mouth. If you swallow it, it can cause an
erosion and perforation of the esophagus, stomach, small
bowel. Many people do indeed, die of perforations of their
(Continued on p. 7, col. I)

THOUGHT OF THE MONTH
"The great sin, fear.
The greatest mistake, giving up.
The most satisfying experience, doing your duty first.
The best action, keeping the mind clear and the judgment
good.
The greatest blessing, good health.
The biggest fool, the man who lies to himself.
The greatest gamble, substituting hope for facts.
The most certain thing in life, change.
The greatest job, being needed.
The greatest opportunity, the next one.
The greatest victory, victory over self.
The best play, successful work.
The greatest handicap, egotism.
The most expensive indulgence, hate.
The greatest loss, loss of self-confidence."

Contributors to Northwest Turfgrass
Association Research Fund
CORRECTION:
Excuse our oversight for not listing
Jacklin Seed Co., Post Falls, Idaho in
the December issue of Turfgrass
Topics.,

(Borrowed from the March GCSAA Chapter Newsletter)
SALEM
(503) 581-7823

| L . Ben Malikowski

James R. Chapman
Senior Technical Representative
17012 N.E. 21 at Street
Betlevue, Wash. 98008
Telephone: 206/746-1569

| N. 8320 Carolina Way
fcj Spokane. Wash. 99208
^ Telephone: 508/326-4344

Craig Lewis
15530 Poplar Drive
White Rock. B.C.. Canada V4A 5H8 ;
Telephone: 604/536-2638

WHAT ARE YOUR
NEEDS?

JOBS

Why do some people dislike their jobs and quit? And why
are others happy in their work and stay?
Most of us have to work in order to live. Some of us even
live to work. This raises a question: What basic needs must
be satisfied to make a worker willing and productive?
Job Motivation experts say there are five:
1. Economic security - Equitable financial rewards for
services rendered.
2. Emotional security - Self confidence resulting from an
employee's being in the right job and belonging.
3. Recognition - Credit for accomplishments; a pat on the
back for a job well done.
4. Self-Expression - The need to communicate to superiors
ideas, suggestions, fears and opinions.
5. Self- Respect - The need to be treated as an individual, not
a "hired hand" or a number on the payroll.

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(Continued from p. 4, col 2)

intestines from it. Children, when they take this drug, can
develop a rather agonizing helpless respiration leading to
seizures, coma, loss of bowel and bladder control and death.
The chemical compound is now manufactured at 100 times
in tons the volume of dioxin and its compound is known as
acetylsalicylic acid or aspirin.
When you take toxicology studies like this and results like
this, if you are to try to pass this currently through our FDA,
you would not get aspirin licensed for use on humans.
The key is ratio. A ratio of the amount we can give versus
the toxicity of the drug. Common drugs like digitalis that we
give to the elderly people to strengthen their heart, has a
therapeutic ratio of 2 to 1. Double the dose — kill the
patient. That's all. This is not very safe, though when
controlled, it is very safe if you know how to use it.
Most of our anti-cancer drugs that I deal with in treating
cancer patients cause cancer in animals. So even though we
use them to treat cancer in humans, they still can cause
cancer in animals.
The dosages of chemicals that are used in the forests a r e a
different matter. The Lane County Medical Society asked
the O M A for an opinion on the herbicides and the O M A
Subcommittee on herbicides felt the risk was acceptable.
Now, does this mean that the doctors are sadistic fellows
who feel that we are to be exposed to toxic chemicals? To
defend such chemicals, against public and an emotional
issue is a rather hard thing to do. People indeed feel that you
are doing them a disservice by speaking. And it is hard to
explain to them when they see toxicology studies of rats and
mice and monkeys dying why some doctor is defending
those compounds. The reason basically, is that T C D D or
dioxon is the questionable compound here. And it is a toxic
chemical, a by-product of the manufacture of the phenoxy
herbicides. It's present now in about one three hundredths
to one sixth hundredth or less of what it use to be back in the
Vietnamese War. And if indeed we use one pound of 2,4,5-T
on an acre, we end up with 0.00000004 milligrams, a
milligram is a thousandth of a gram, of T C D D on a cubic
yard. That would be one millionth of the amount needed to
cause a change in an embryo of the most sensitive animal.
The New Zealand Department of Health computed on
sprayed water supplies, which we don't do, but if they were
done, the person would have to drink between 43 thousand
to 71 thousand liters per day to achieve a lethal dose for the
most sensitive animal which is a guinea pig. So it's just
identical to the artifical sweetner thing where essentially a
person would have to drink a tankcar load of artificial
sweeteners per day for their entire life. Yet we're talking
about a rat and that's the problem, because we do not know
what the toxic levels are for humans on these compounds.
We know that there have been industrial exposures to

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tremendous degrees for many years when there were no
environmental health industrial medicine people to protect
our population. We know that there were workers who
worked purely in the dust and the bagging of these chemicals
before they were dissolved into liquids to make the solutions
of them spray over acres. These people worked for years
with dusty clothing and breathing in the concentrated
chemical. The only side effect we've seen in them is
chloracne—it's a rash on the skin the same seen in chlorine
manufacturing. We've seen it in chlorine workers as well. So
it's not specific to phenoxy herbicides.
We know that human levels have actually been drawn on
oral dosages, feeding people with the herbicides, and
computations have been made on chronic dosages. For
example, 136 patients Dow Chemical employed for over 30
years they have seen no evidence of any cancer yet. And one
would expect, in following 136 people, to see cancer in a 30
year period. But eventually they will, because one out of
every four of us will develop cancer in our lifetime.
The thing that we see really sporadic reports of human
toxicology that often are non-documented. What we need
really are documented cases and when such are done we
often find no evidence of damage from the herbicides. Dr.
Barry Rumack, the director of the Rocky Mountain Poison
Control Center stated that he has yet to see a case of toxicity
from standard use of the phenoxy herbicides.

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NAGOYA
ZURICH

Assessing The Value
of Ornamental
Trees and Shrubs
The question is frequently asked to a number of us what
the value of a shade tree or an ornamental plant which has
either been damaged or removed through rights-of-way,
LID's, etc. which may have been the cause of the removal of
the tree or the death of it due to these operations. It is
extremely difficult to assess the value of such a tree or shrub
but there are ways of doing it.
Valuable trees and shrubs should have good records of the
age and value at the time of purchase and occasionally the
value should be appraised by a competent nurseryman or
arboriculturist.
Bruce Webster, urban forester for the Nebraska Forest
Service, in Lincoln, reported in the Nov. 1978 issue of the
Journal of Arboriculture a point system for judging the
condition of shade trees. His formula utilizes five
factors: 1) trunk growth rate, 2) structure, 3) insects and
diseases, 4) crown development, and 5) life expectancy.
Each factor which is shown below is assigned a point value
and these are added together for an overall condition rating.
GUIDE FOR JUDGING THE CONDITION OF A SHADE TREE
A. Trunk condition
Sound & Solid

Sections of
bark missing
3

Extensive
decay & hollow
1

B. Growth rate (consider species)
more than 6"
2-6" twig
twig elongation
elongation
3
2
C. Structure

less than 2"
twig elongation
1

5

Sound

one major/several
minor limbs dead,
broken, missing
3

2 or more major
limbs broken, dead,
missing

1
5
ASSESSING THE VALUE OF ORNAMENTAL TREES AND SHRUBS
D. Insect and Disease
No pests present 1 pest present
3
2
E. Crown development

2 or more
pests present

1

unbalanced and
lacking a full
Full and balanced full but unbalanced crown
1
3
F. Life Expectancy
less than 5 years
Over 30 years
15-20 years
5
1
3
Percent
Rating
Condition Class:
26-23
80-100%
Excellent
22-19
60-80%
Good
18-14
40-60%
Fair
13-10
20-40%
Poor
9-6
Very Poor
0-20%
The percent figure (center column above) can be used for
the
condition percentage in the standard appraisal equation for
nontransplantable trees.

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NORTHWEST TURFGRASS
ASSOCIATION CAR RAFFLE
The
Northwest
Association
of
Golf
Course
Superintendents is sponsoring a car raffle for the Northwest
( Turfgrass Association's Special Research Fund. A new car
will be given away at the Northwest Turfgrass Conference
from a drawing of all tickets sold between now and
September 20. Many of you will be contacted for ticket sales
and for purchasing tickets as well. The Superintendents are
hoping to sell 15,000 tickets for this raffle at $1.00 each.
Those who which to buy a number of chances will find it
worthwhile as an income tax deduction as a donation to a
non-profit corporation.
Mr. Larry Gilhuly, Seattle Golf and Country Club, is
heading up this campaign along with several committee
members. Larry and his committee have done a great deal of
hard footwork at this time in order to obtain the necessary
permits from the State and all of the arrangements for the
car. The car will be a 1979 Ford Mustang Ghia - wellequipped - so it should be well worth your time to sell tickets
and to buy some as well.
The proceeds from this raffle will be placed in a Special
Research and Scholarship Fund of the Northwest Turfgrass
Association to be used to help support both research
projects and scholarship and educational needs. This is a
most worthwhile effort and I think we should all get behind
it 100%.

TURFGRASS FIELD DAYS
Don't forget to mark your calendars again for the
Turfgrass Field Days. A special field day for golf course
superintendents or those closely allied with the golf course
industry will be held on Tuesday, June 26, 1979. The field
day will begin at 10:00 a.m. at Farm 5, 6 miles east of the
Research Station and will conclude at approximately 1:00
p.m.
All research that is ongoing will be viewed by all in
attendance at that time.
Bring along any friends, administrators, club officials or
anyone else you wish to being to the field day with you.
A public turfgrass field day will be held on June 27,
Wednesday, for all other segments of the turfgrass industry
including homeowners, parks, cemeteries, schools, etc. The
program will be slightly different for this group since more
emphasis will be given to lawn-type turf.
The field days have been set ahead a little later this year to
accomodate those of you who hire extra summer help
allowing you to have these people at work so you can take
the time off from your schedules. We'll see you on June 26
and June 27.

NfiUfe

(Continued

from p. 2, col.

2)

water will become one of our most precious resources and
one of the most critical. It has already become that critical in
certain areas. Without question, deep wells have to be sunk
deeper and from all indications ground water levels are
dropping. Commissions have been established to study the
water situation and to come up with guidelines for future
survival.
The crux of this whole dissertation with regard to human
water needs is that we, as turfgrass managers, must do a
much better job of managing water in the future. One of the
alternatives, of course, is to use recyclable water such as
sewage affluent or to use water from sources of runoff,
impoundment, where we can trap runoff water annually.
Water is probably one of the most abused factors on
nearly all managed turfgrass areas where water is "usually
plentiful." The price hasn't caught up with us yet but I have
no doubt that someday it will. We should learn to
judiciously apply water and only when it is necessary. This
means that there will need to be a great deal of education
among ourselves individually to settle for a little less quality
in certain areas while maintaining an acceptable level of
aesthetics.
Since excessive water can be very harmful to turfgrass
production and maintenance, it hardly seems necessary to
delve into all of the points in detail but among them would
include an increase in soil structural deterioration, soil
compaction, reduced soil oxygen, shallow rooting
characteristics, nutrient leaching, and oxygen exclusion
from the soil profile.
1 believe it is time that the professional turfgrass manager
must begin an educational program with his clientele to
convince them that we must do with a little less.

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Officers of the Northwest Turfgrass

ASSOCIATION
Joe Pottenger
President
Mark Snyder
Vice-President
John Monson
. Treasurer
Dr. Roy Goss
Exec. Secretary
NORTHWEST T U R F G R A S S TOPICS is sponsored by the Northwest Turfgrass Association and
financed through funds of this organization. Any
communications concerning distribution of this paper
or association business should be directed to John
Monson, P.O. Box 274, Redmond, WA 98052, or Roy
L. Goss, Western Washington Experiment Station,
Puyallup, Washington 98371.
Communications concerning content of this paper
should be directed to Dr. Roy Goss, Editor, Western
Washington Research and Extension Center,
Puyallup, Washington 98371.