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Aerial photo of Keiser’s Now-Withdrawn New River Golf Course Proposal. Courtesy Coos County.
Michael Keiser’s proposed New River golf course south of Bandon is rising for a third time.
Twice Keiser, through his company Bandon Biota, had applied for a permit to place a golf course on property he owns in the vicinity of Twomile Creek, adjacent to Bandon State Natural Area. The first attempt, about ten years ago, included a purchase of 280 acres of the state park for some 2.5 million. That project ended when it became known that Keiser had hired a local well-drilling company to drill unauthorized boreholes in the state park property which he coveted, but did not own at that stage of the negotiations. Bandon Biota applied to Coos County a second time in 2022 for the golf course, this time without the state park land. Coos County granted the permit, though for a golf course less than half the size Keiser had applied for, and without the golf-related buildings he also sought. Keiser withdrew the application after Oregon Coast Alliance filed an appeal of the planning commission approval.
Bandon Biota then filed a third application with Coos County. Bandon Biota at the same time filed three applications with the Water Resources Department (WRD) to transfer water that it owns on cranberry bogs up to the proposed golf course, and then an application for a reservoir. The applications make it sound innocent: just a change from irrigation in one place to irrigation in another place. But irrigation of cranberry bogs is not the same as irrigating turf grass — cranberries are much more water-conserving than turf grass is. Water availability is already a longstanding problem for the farmers and rural residences in the area. At the 2022-23 hearings for the golf course, water problems occupied much of the discussion, and Keiser’s water report was criticized for being vague and incomplete. Now his company is seeking water transfers to the proposed golf course with no analysis at all of the likely effects to the neighborhood water picture.
WRD approved the transfer applications, and ORCA protested them inside the agency, arguing the approval was inappropriate. The protests are ongoing. ORCA also provided comments on the reservoir application and its problematic aspects, and that process is also ongoing.
After local hearings, the Board of Commissioners approved the golf course. ORCA appealed the BOC approval to the Land Use Board of Appeals, which upheld the county. ORCA then appealed the LUBA decision to the Court of Appeals, which is ongoing. The same problems that always dogged this proposal are still there. This area is already tightly settled and farmed, with rural residents, cranberry bogs, other local farming operations and small local roads. A golf course would be a disaster here, bringing in scads of traffic, and using much scarce water. Most of the lands are zoned Exclusive Farm Use, on which golf courses are allowed; but a significant acreage is zoned High Value Farmland, which does not allow golf courses. Water is a principal issue in this region of scarce water, and that will not change.
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