The Olympic Golf Course May Really Be In Jeopardy This Time

Dreadful news to the Olympic golf movement and the Olympics in general as reported by AP's Jenny Barchfield and Stephen Wade, who said a court has decided the Olympic course in Rio should be modified to meet enviromental concerns even though the holes were cleared long ago.

This, even though the course has been shaped and much of it is mostly awaiting seeding. Primary clearing work was completed long ago.

In a raucous, at times chaotic two-hour-long hearing, Klausner heard the concerns of environmentalists, biologists and Rio city hall's top environmental official, as well as attorneys from both sides.

Klausner played the role of mediator, nudging the public prosecutors, who brought the suit, to offer a proposal that would preserve as much of the Atlantic rainforest area as possible while allowing the golf course to continue.

"It is in society's interests that the Olympics take place and it's also in society's interests that the environment be preserved," he said. "What has to be observed is legality, and within legality is respect for the environment."

A forest engineer with the state environment secretariat, Isabela Lobato da Silva, who visited the forested area before construction on the golf course began, said that while some forested areas have already been destroyed, the damage was not irreversible.

I walked through some of these "forested" areas, littered with trash and free of wildlife. And I'll be the first to defend the rights of those who feel a golf course should go forward until all vital environmental issues are resolved, but the current state of the Rio course is the final shaping and seeding stage. That means all of the clearing that was to be done has been done. So this appears to be yet another bogus incident in the sad saga that is the IOC taking the Olympics to Brazil. The next ten days will be huge.

Update on 2014-09-05 03:51 by Geoff

**Alex Miceli adds a few thoughts including this:

Perhaps the oddest twist to this tale is that the course was approved in 2012 when Rio's city council passed an ordinance that allowed the area to be used as a golf course, and city government then granted the appropriate permits. Yet a public prosecutor who works for the city is bringing the lawsuit on property that many observers say has served no environmental purpose.

The Associated Press reported that the judge's proposal would need to move the golf course away from a lagoon on the property's south side and toward a multi-lane highway on the north. By shifting the course northward, a 400-yard-wide green corridor could be opened.

However, given that course construction has been completed, short of the few remaining holes to be grassed and any aesthetic improvements, such a design change would be all but impossible.