For golf courses, it's not easy being green

They're years from bearing fruit, but 100 slender young pomegranate trees are doing something even more remarkable for the Bakersfield Country Club golf course.

They're helping it save water.

Now in its third year, the historic southwestern drought has threatened Central Valley farmers since it began.

Wells in east Porterville are running dry, and even cities like Bakersfield -- whose officials believe it has sufficient water rights and groundwater access to weather the crisis -- have called for conservation.

And the odds of a long-term, or "megadrought," shrouding the region for more than 30 years have increased to 20 to 50 percent, university officials at Cornell, the University of Arizona, and the U.S. Geological Survey said recently.

Faced with rising water and utility prices, many golf courses throughout the region are either reducing their water usage -- or doing a lot of thinking about it.

TURNING BACK THE CLOCK

It's likely no other sport is more threatened by a drought than golf, which has come to be played on thirsty grass in settings that rival the world's great parks.

Industry observers and course managers say the drought is prompting many course operators to reduce their play areas or pursue water-wise landscaping.

Others have turned back the clock to links-style golf -- redesigning venerable courses according to decades-old photographs, where neat greens, fairways and tees are punctuated by large areas of sand and rough, and trees are few.

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For golf courses, it's not easy being green