|
MINDING YOUR
|
| GARBAGE GOLF By George Lyle |
Clemens Gailliot Jr. has a vision. In a few
years golfers will stand in the pro shop at his family's golf course looking
out over the rolling dunes, blowing sawgrass and deep bunkers and say:
"Wow, what a dump!" |
 artwork by Michael Goodman |
And Gailliot will take it as
the highest of compliments. He and his family run a dump: a construction-debris-
only landfill, to be precise. But the Hilltop Landfill in Fairfax County
is in transformation. In January the Gailliot family will seek bids on
the initial work for the first nine holes of the course, with an eye toward
opening the front nine in the summer of 2000.
The landfill is being filled according to the golf course's specs, so minimal earthmoving will be needed once dumping is completed. "There are some golf courses that move a million yards of earth," says Gailliot, "so we are saving time and money by shaping it as we go." |
| He notes that a few other landfills have been topped off
with courses, including The Hamptons in Hampton.
The transition from landfill to golf course is the latest incarnation of the 175 acres the Gailliot family has owned in southeastern Fairfax County since 1917. The family originally operated an egg business in what was then rural countryside. That business then hatched into a chicken broiler operation, which turned into a sand and gravel pit. As the natural resource was depleted, the Gailliots realized they had a hole to fill, so Hilltop Landfill opened in 1979, just in time to accommodate Northern Virginia's building boom in the 1980s. "In the late 1980s ... we started thinking: What could we do with this land once the landfill was complete?" Gailliot says. "A golf course seemed like a pretty good idea." It may be a great idea: Fairfax County doesn't have enough golf courses to meet the demand for this fast-growing game. As planned, Hilltop Golf Club will be slightly more upscale than courses run by the local park authority. A driving range is already open, but the back nine will have to wait for a remaining section of the landfill to fill up. That will take about 15 years, depending upon construction trends. Until then the 6,100-yard, par-72 Hilltop golf course will continue to take shape -- one Dumpster at a time.
|
