There’s a new water hazard at Harvard Gulch Golf Course.

The city-owned course closed in October so that a new irrigation system could be put in, and a nearly 8-acre-foot pond installed north of hole No. 2.

Scott Rethlake, Denver’s director of golf, told BusinessDen the plan is to reopen to golfers the middle of next month, although the exact date is weather-dependent. The new irrigation system will be fully functioning by June 1.

“It’s a pretty cool project, actually,” Rethlake said of the new pond. “We had an area there that was kind of a stormwater runoff area, been there for years, and it was filled with silt. It was kind of a marsh, and it had bad mosquitos in the wet season and was not very attractive or aesthetically pleasing.”

Rethlake said Denver Golf worked with Denver Water to dig the roughly 10-foot-deep pond, which will hold three days of irrigation water for the course. Notably, Rethlake said, the water that will be held in the pond — about 2.8 million gallons — will be non-potable water. The course previously used more expensive and scarce potable water.

The pond is at the edge of the golf course and the adjacent Harvard Gulch Park.

“We’ll have enough water running through to have some flow, so no mosquitos hopefully,” he said. “And a little of it will be in play on the course, which is nice, plus a bench for a meditation area for non-golfers on the northern side where the park is.”

The new irrigation system, together with the pond, cost about $2 million, Rethlake said.

“It was pretty much split between us — Denver Water put in a little over a million (dollars) and Parks and Recreation and Golf put in about a million, based on usage,” Rethlake said. “It’s about 70 percent parks, 30 percent golf.”

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