Golf Environment Organization

As demands on the world’s potable water supply increase, golf courses must find alternative irrigation water supplies.

While there are a number of viable options which can be used, those which have been employed most successfully in recent years include the following:

Water Harvesting

This can be of several types including water storage using in-ground reservoirs, aboveground impoundments and aquifer storage and recovery (ASR). Most often for golf courses storage ponds are used to collect storm runoff water that might otherwise be lost and wasted.

Aquifer storage and recovery (ASR)

ASR is the underground storage of storm water, surface water, fresh groundwater or reclaimed water, which is appropriately treated to potable standards and injected into an aquifer through wells during wet periods. The water is stored with the intent to later recover the water for use in the future during dry periods.

Brackish Surface Water and Groundwater

Use of brackish waters or even ocean water to supplement other water sources. Many grasses such as bermudagrass (Cynodon sp.) and Seashore Paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum) are very tolerant of high salt content water, allowing golf courses to irrigate with brackish waters that otherwise have little other use. Care must be taken and a state-of-the-art irrigation system must be in place to allow precise application of this water so as not to affect native plant materials.

Brackish groundwater is typically defined as water with a total dissolved salt concentration between 1,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L) and 10,000 mg/L. The terms fresh, brackish, saline and brine are used to describe the quality of the water. Although brackish supplies in the low range of these salinities may be used for some agricultural purposes, they do not meet public drinking water standards. Advance treatment technologies, such as reverse osmosis (RO), electrodialysis (ED) or electrodialysis reversal (EDR), membrane technologies and lime softening must be employed before this type of supply is suitable for human consumption. If the salinity is below 1,000 mg/L, less expensive treatment technologies, such as microfiltration or nanofiltration may be used.

Desalination

Construction of reverse-osmosis (RO) desalinization plants on-site to produce irrigation water from ocean water or brackish water where other supplies are not available or are very expensive to purchase. Many sites in areas of low or undependable rainfall such as the Caribbean, Egypt and other arid locations have built RO plants in recent years and have established good-quality, dependable, and less costly supplies of irrigation water, while allowing others in their communities to use the limited supply of potable water.

Reclaimed (Recycled) Water

Use of tertiary treated effluent from municipal sewage treatment facilities. This reclaimed or recycled water provides moisture and nutrients to the golf course while helping the municipality avoid discharging the effluent water into nearby rivers. The turf does an excellent job of filtering the water of nutrients and breaking down various chemicals and biological contaminants in the water. Reclaimed water is water that has received at least secondary treatment and basic disinfection, and is reused after flowing out of a domestic wastewater treatment facility. Reuse is the deliberate application of reclaimed water for a beneficial purpose.

Use of reclaimed water on golf courses is mandatory in some locales in the Southwestern US, and parts of southeastern Spain such as Valencia region. It is estimated that more than 1000 US courses currently use this source of water. In Florida, this has been considered routine practice for over 20 years. Total water use by Florida golf courses in 2000 was estimated at 172 billion gallons. Average water use per golf course was 133 million gallons per year, plus or minus 30 million gallons (95% confidence interval). Taking total irrigated acres and dividing it into the total amount consumed from all water sources, average consumption by Florida golf courses was 1.23 million gallons per acre, or 3.75 acre-feet applied in 2000. The use of recycled water was the primary source for almost half of all golf facilities and has grown from 8 percent in 1974 to 21 percent in 1994 and to 49 percent in 2000. The second most common source was surface water such as canals and lakes (29 percent), followed by groundwater (21 percent) from wells. In 2005, 462 golf courses used 110 million gallons per day offsetting potable water demands by 75%.

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