Dallas’ Keeton Park Golf Course dealing with flooding from leaks

Golfers say the city-owned course off N. Jim Miller Road has seen standing puddles and soggy ground for the past several months because of running water.
DALLAS – At Dallas’ Keeton Park Golf Course, sand traps have turned into mud traps.
Golfers say the city-owned course off N. Jim Miller Road has seen standing puddles and soggy ground for the past several months because of running water.
Mesquite Mayor Pro Tem B.W. Smith played at Keeton once a week for years.
He took FOX 4 on a tour of the soggy course.
“It floods the cart path, but this is a problem that has been going on for months and months and months,” he said. “It’s rampant all over the golf course, where water is standing, and we haven’t had good rain in thirty days.”
Smith is not the only one who has noticed.
“We’re thinking it can’t be from the sprinkler system. Something’s busted or something because it never goes away. Even when the conditions get real, real dry the water’s just pouring off there all the time,” said golfer Randy Fast.
Smith says he has called the City of Dallas multiple times with no response.
 
“[I] spoke to a lady and she transferred me to another lady that I spoke with and again, I told her who I was and why I was calling about the water that’s just running everywhere at Keeton golf course and nobody ever called me back. Since then I have called that number a couple of times and I don’t get an answer, it just rings,” says Smith.
In some places, it appears work started on a leak, but stopped. From the grass growth around it, it appears work has been stopped for a while.
“There’s no way that this should be like this for any golfer to see this, and you look at it, man, this is a man-made obstacle,” said Smith. “When it’s man-made llike this, and we’re trying to get it corrected, and nothing’s being done, it’s frustrating.”
Dallas Parks and Rec director John Jenkins told FOX 4 on Thursday afternoon this is the first complaint he’s heard about the Keeton course.
Jenkins said the course was built in 1979 and has an old irrigation system, spawning leaks.
He said the city has a sense of urgency about making repairs, but that it is not unusual to fix one leak and have another pop.
Jenkins says the city is not neglecting the experience of golfers or losing city water. The water for the course’s irrigation system comes from the Trinity River. 
Information in this article comes from a FOX 4 tour of Keeton Park and conversations with Mesquite Mayor Pro Tem B.W. Smith, Dallas Parks and Recreation Director John Jenkins and other golfers.