Best Management Practices
Driving Sustainability at Your Facility and Advocating for Golf's Future
Golf course superintendents in Ontario are professional land managers entrusted to protect the environment and communities the property lies within. Regulatory requirements such as Integrated Pest Management Accreditation Program, Permit to Take Water, and others create a framework superintendents must abide by. The Best Management Practices (BMP) for Ontario Golf Courses, a voluntary initiative of the Ontario Golf Superintendents' Association (OGSA), provides a comprehensive document developed by experts, and vetted by your peer superintendents, that can help foster the sustainability of our industry.
At the 2024 Ontario Turfgrass Management Conference....
At our 2024 Turfgrass Management Conference, we presented our Ontario BMP Manual.
Attendees experienced:
- The history of the BMP initiative.
- How, with rapidly changing regulations, our industry needs to better communicate golf’s positive environmental impact. BMPs are the language of regulators.
- A walk through the document, highlighting the integration of current IPM and Water regulations within the BMP for Ontario Golf Courses.
- The BMP document serves as a conduit to access vital regulatory information and offers industry expert recommended best practices to further enhance your environmental efforts.
- An explanation of the benefits to you and your golf course, specifically the impact on the sustainability triangle of people, planet, and profit.
- From the minute the door opens at your maintenance facility the goal is to offer a safe environment for staff and golfers, the community at large, and the environment. This comprehensive document helps superintendents in Ontario tell that story.
- Finally, how to build your own facility BMP in GCSAA’s online tool.
- Become a member of the GCSAA to build your own facility BMP, or make use of our OGSA BMP document at your facility.
- For those who choose to build your own facilty document, you can use the Ontario BMP as your template! We are here to help.
- Those in the regulatory world will applaud the efforts of the OGSA in building this document, then they will ask how many are using it. Will you be one?
The BMPs for Ontario Golf Courses document can become a vital building block to communicate and elevate your environmentally positive efforts to stakeholders including those in golf, within your community, and the regulatory arena.