At just over 26 acres, Bristol’s golf course, off Tupelo Street, is never going to compete with Pebble Beach. But thoughtful planning by a team including the town, Save the Bay, Save Bristol Harbor, the Recreation Department, engineers, and landscape architecture consultants who specialize in golf courses have come up with a plan for a community resource that looks poised to serve as a lot of things to a lot of people.

“We had two goals,” said Ed Tanner, Town Planner. “We needed to do something about the water quality in Silver Creek, and we wanted to maintain a viable and hopefully much better golf course.”

Both of those things were in dire need of rescue.

Silver Creek has long been a major contributor to pollution problems in Bristol Harbor and Narragansett Bay. Decades of abuse have left much of the watershed at death’s door, and since a major 2007 study on the health of the water body was completed, the town has been taking steps to remediate it.

Topographically, the golf course occupies a high point about where Tupelo Street runs between Hope Street and Metacom Avenue. To the north, water runs downhill to Oyster Point, ending up in the Warren River. To the south, it runs through much of Bristol until it reaches the harbor.

It’s a massive watershed, covering a good part of the interior of Bristol, encompassing not only the golf course, but also the Broad Common Road manufacturing corridor, Mt. Hope High School, St. Mary’s Cemetery, and hundreds of private homes. It all adds up to a lot of pressure on an ecosystem that performs its important function best when it is simply left alone.

Contaminants enter the watershed from a variety of potential sources, natural and otherwise. Geese, regulars at the course, are a huge problem. Their droppings contain compounds that upset the nitrogen balance of the ecosystem. Fertilizers, urban and industrial runoff, act much the same way, and it only gets worse downstream. An application of fertilizer, or the droppings of a flock of geese, percolate into the watershed up at the golf course. The contaminated water flows downstream to the high school, where Silver Creek picks up the chemicals from any fertilizer used on fields or nearby lawns, increasing the concentration of pollutants. The water quality continues to decrease as the water branches, flowing through the cemetery, behind Benjamin Church Manor, and past the Guiteras School. By the time the creek flows into the brackish pond in front of Guiteras, the water is filthy. Here it receives a final splash of goose before flowing into the harbor with the next falling tide.

The course itself was receiving no love either, earning national notoriety for being “of a worseness so extreme that you occasionally wonder if it’s not ironic,” (‘When a Bad Golf Course Edges Into Goodness,’ New York Times, May 22, 2011).

In the fall of 2018, Director of Community Development Diane Williamson received a $300,000 grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, specifically earmarked for southern New England estuary restoration. The plan at the time was to prioritize the watershed, while making improvements to the course in the process, with a combination of town funds and volunteer and in-kind efforts.

Since then, a state DEM grant for recreational facilities, through the Green Economy bond, was announced, and applied for. The town has asked the state for $400,000 to make it a better course.

“We are hoping that resonates with DEM and they see this as a nice regional amenity,” said a cautiously optimistic Mr. Tanner. “We hope to hear in March; we have our fingers crossed.”

In the meantime, after many iterations, they have settled on a course master plan. It’s somewhat similar in layout to the old one, though it will move in the reverse direction and eliminate the two longer holes at the southernmost end of the course. “We are going to let the areas that want to be wet, stay wet, and golf on the land that’s high and dry.” Planners hope that realigned holes will also eliminate the history of problems with golf balls encroaching on neighboring properties.

The end result will be a nine-hole, par-3 course.

“The designer hopes to introduce interesting elements and natural features, so even though it will be short, it will be fun and playable,” said Mr. Tanner.

Plantings will be designed to let nature take over in some areas, with natural buffers around the wettest parts of the course. Walking paths and bridges will create a parklike atmosphere that will make the course enjoyable for walks and birdwatching as well.

Organizers envision a walking course (though limited carts could be made available for players with mobility issues.) The Town Recreation Department is excited about potential opportunities to add another recreational facility to its list of resources.

The town is unsure if longtime operator ELJ is interested in continuing to manage the course, as they have done so under a lease for many years.

Though they have not determined the details of any future management structure, the town does plan to take a more active management role in the course moving forward. Later this year they will be putting out an RFP looking for interest from management entities.

Engineering consultant Wright-Pierce has worked with the town on recent projects at Guiteras School as well as at the Town Beach, and they are also working with Providence-based landscape architects Garner + Gerrish.

“The budget is just over a million total,” said Mr. Tanner. In addition to the existing $300,000 grant and the hoped-for $400,000 grant, the town has commitments for in-kind services, plantings, and volunteers. “We’re going to structure the bid with alternates so we can back out of things that we can’t afford. We did that at the town beach and it worked nicely.”

If all goes according to plan, the town is looking at permitting through the spring, going out for bid in May and June, groundbreaking in July, seeding in the fall, and reintroducing Bristol’s golfers into their natural habitat in July 2021.