An environmental lobby says the province is wasting $18 million in taypayer dollars by rebuilding a golf course in the floodplain of a mountain creek that was heavily-damaged by last summer’s high waters.

The Alberta Wilderness Association predicts the 36-hole facility in Kananaskis Country will be washed away again the next time the province’s foothills are hit with intense rains. “This is baffling,” AWA conservation officer Carolyn Campbell said.

“The Conservative government doesn’t appear to have learned anything from last year’s floods.”

While the province is allocating $3 million of the money to restore berms and armor the banks of Evan Thomas Creek, a spokeswoman said she could not promise the rebuilt course wouldn’t be destroyed again by flooding.



Kananaskis Country Golf Course in 2010, before the flood.

“There is no guarantee,” Marylou Reeleder said in a e-mail reply to questions.

“However, the Alberta govermment is seeking advice from engineers to reduce the risk.”

Built in 1981 with about $10 million in money from the Heritage Fund, the course by designer Robert Trent Jones is estimated to contribute appoximately $14 million annually in direct and indirect benefits to Alberta’s economy, according to a three-year-old government study.

“It is a vital part of our tourism industry,” Tourism and Parks Minister Richard Starke said in a prepared release.

“Restoring parks infrastructure benefits the people in our communities and helps support the local economy.”

About 150 jobs were lost when the course was shuttered last June after high waters ripped through the fairways and greens constructed on the creek’s alluvial fan, damaging all but four holes on the course.

When it was open, about 60,000 rounds of golf were played annually, 85 per cent of which were by Albertans.

Darren Robinson, the course’s general manager, said the province’s decision to rebuild was exciting news.

“It’s a great sense of relief,” Robinson said.

“It’s been 13 long, difficult months for all of our team and the local community.”

While the govermment trumpeted the potential economic spinoffs from the investment, it refused to disclose the terms of its lease arrangement for the course with a private firm — Kan-Alta Golf Management Ltd. — that appears never to have been publicly tendered in the three decades since the facility was first-opened.

“The Alberta government has an existing contractual agreement with the operator that will be honored until the end of the term,” Reeleeder said in answer to questions about whether the lease had been subject to a competitive process.

“At that time, there will be an opportunity for other businesses to respond to requests for proposals to operate the golf course.”

Company records reveal that Kan-Alta is owned in part by Norman Kimball and Brian Bygrave.

Kimball was an Edmonton Eskimos teammate of former Premier Don Getty and Bygrave is the former pro at that city’s Derrick Club where the retired Tory politician used to like to do his golfing.

Media reports pegged the nominal rent for the course in 1989 at about $225,000 a year — a return of about 2 per cent on the what taxpayer’s had invested.

But a report by the province’s financial watchdog that same year took issue with the fact the government allowed Kan-Alta to deduct the costs of untendered construction it did at the golf course from rent it owed under its lease.