CGSA Names Award Winners

Dean Piller and Mitch Davidson have been named by the Canadian Golf Superintendents Association as winners of the 2009 Environmental Achievement Award and Gordon Witteveen Award, respectively.

The CGSA Toro Environmental Achievement Award is presented to a superintendent member that has completed an environmental project that puts into practice an Environmental Management Plan as outlined in the CGSA Environmental Management Resource Manual.

Piller, the superintendent at Cordova Bay in Victoria, B.C., is a 25-year CGSA member and a former association president. He won the Witteveen Award in 1998 and 2002.

Cordova Bay was the recipient of the 2003 Saanich Environmental Award for the development and construction industry and is certified as an Audubon Sanctuary with the Audubon Society.

Cordova Bay’s project summary from 2006-2009 was to improve greens, soil physical properties and drainage venting.

The plan has 14 separate objectives as part of the Environmental Management Program and incorporates several initiatives from an irrigation audition, implementing a crayfish rehabilitation project to aid in algae/duckweed reduction, reducing fungicides by 50 per cent and reusing aerification cores on the rough as topdressing material.

The Gordon Witteveen Award is presented to the superintendent or assistant superintendent who is judged to have authored the best article written and published in the GGSA GreenMaster Magazine in the previous year.

Mitch Davidson wrote An Experience of a Lifetime in the May/June, 2009 issue.

Davidson is the assistant superintendent at Wascana Country Club in Regina and is a three-year member of the CGSA, as well as the 2008 Future Superintendent of the Year Award winner. He will receive a plaque and a cash award from the Toro Corporation at the Canadian International Turfgrass Conference and Trade Show in Toronto on Feb. 28.

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