Hills of Cove Residents Face Weeds, Aging Infrastructure Concerns

Copperas Cove Parks and Recreation Director Jeff Stoddard pointed to a small patch of Poa annua that had found its way onto a putting green at Hills of Cove Golf Course. It was one visible symptom of a much larger problem: an aging, underdocumented irrigation system that a consultant concluded may need to be torn out and rebuilt entirely.

Brown spots had spread across fairways and greens, and patchy rough terrain encroached on critical playing surfaces, making precise putting difficult or impossible in spots. A lack of proper irrigation had left at least one once-lush putting surface barren. The degradation was not confined to the golf course: residents throughout the Hills of Cove subdivision had also been dealing with overgrown weeds and outdated infrastructure across the neighborhood.

Early March storms that struck Coryell County tore the netting surrounding the driving range and snapped the large poles that secured it. Renovations to replace the poles and netting were already underway, but those repairs left the deteriorating playing surfaces untouched.

The root of the turf decline traced back underground. Stoddard engaged a consultant who conducted a study with soil samples. The consultant's conclusion gave the city two paths: replace the existing irrigation system piece by piece, or build a completely new one. Either option was complicated by the absence of any reliable record of where the pipes ran or what size they were.

"What we have right now is a system that was built with the original nine holes that we don't know where that pipe is, what size of pipe, except for the things that we have fixed along the way," Stoddard said.

Without a working map of the underground infrastructure, any repair work would require the city to rediscover the system as crews went. No cost estimates or timelines for irrigation repairs had been announced. Parks and Recreation had begun the diagnostic work, but whether the course ultimately received a piecemeal fix or a complete infrastructure rebuild remained unresolved.