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As the future of Hiawatha Golf Course once again comes up for consideration by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, much has been said about the course's history and importance to Black golfers, and the desire to retain 18 holes on the site instead of the proposed reduction to 9 holes.

What's missing from these discussions is any workable plan for how to accomplish that. Commissioner Becka Thompson ("Plowing ahead with Hiawatha Golf Course plan is not the answer," July 20) offers vague promises and lots of rhetoric, but no details. That's because there is no way to keep 18 holes at Hiawatha without making sacrifices that Minneapolis residents would find wholly unacceptable.

It's not as if an 18-hole plan is absent due to lack of trying. In the eight years since planning began, park staff have explored a number of concepts that retain 18 holes. They ultimately abandoned those concepts after determining that they would not be compatible with the other major goals for the site: managing flooding, reducing groundwater pumping and cleaning up pollution entering the lake.

In April 2022, the Bronze Foundation and Save Hiawatha 18 presented their own concept to the Park Board to retain 18 holes. A review of their proposal by Barr Engineering concluded that not only would their plan fail to resolve the water issues, it also violated several state statutes.

The greatest obstacle to any 18-hole plan is flood plain regulations. Hiawatha Golf Course sits in a flood plain, which is why it floods during high water events. To prevent major damage to the course, the greens, tees and fairways need to be raised above the level of floodwaters. Raising the acreage needed to keep 18 holes dry will require a lot of fill, which would reduce the holding capacity of the flood plain, and there is not enough space at Hiawatha to compensate with additional flood storage elsewhere on the site.

Reducing flood plain capacity is strictly forbidden by state law, and for good reason: If floodwaters can't enter the golf course, they will be pushed elsewhere, most likely into nearby homes.

Given these limitations, the Park Board has only two options that would keep 18 holes at Hiawatha. One option is to try to use eminent domain to seize and demolish neighboring homes in order to expand the park and make space. The other option is to take no action and leave the course unchanged. Not only would this require convincing both the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to turn a blind eye to the uncontrolled groundwater pumping and pollution at Hiawatha, but since no amount of pumping can prevent flooding, the course will continue to suffer extensive damage every time a large rain event hits.

Between repair costs and lost revenue, the 2014 flood cost an estimated $4 million, and city taxpayers would foot the entire bill for every future flood. This is the true cost of 18 holes at Hiawatha: bulldozing homes or signing a blank check on behalf of Minneapolis taxpayers.

However much commissioners might want to retain 18 holes, the engineering constraints of the site have left them little choice. Those commissioners voting to advance the nine-hole master plan are the ones who have done their homework and understand the reality of the issue.

The climate is warming, extreme rain events are expected to happen much more frequently, and all the rhetoric in the world won't turn back the next flood.

Ian Young is the leader of Hiawatha for All. More information at www.hiawatha4all.com.