Irrigating Golf Clubs with Treated Wastewater

The sport of golf is played on a large tract of land called a golf course. To maintain the playability and the scenery of a golf course requires an expensive and immense irrigation and sprinkler system which waters the course's grassy fairways and vegetation hazards.

This particular maintenance procedure has drawn lots of environmental concerns over the past 50 years. The issues being brought up include the massive amount of water being used for irrigation. It has been estimated that a golf course needs 2.5 billion gallons of water daily. The huge quantity of water being used has exacerbated the world's water crisis.

Thus, many golf course owners are now looking for ways to alleviate the water shortage problem. One such golf course is the St. Andrews Country Club found in Boca Raton, United States. The club has recently completed its installation of a state-of-the-art system that uses reclaimed water, or wastewater, to irrigate its two golf courses, tennis courts, and plants in their landscaped property.

The golf club has a water recycling system that will draw reclaimed water from the nearby Palm Beach County Utilities Department. The public utility company has the capability to treat wastewater up to federal standards for irrigation use and can irrigate 50 acres of constructed wetlands. Its holding tanks can store more of the treated wastewater, which the golf club plans to exploit.

In addition, the club uses an extremely absorbent species of grass that draws out the additional nitrogen and other nutrients from the wastewater. This means that the use of environmentally hazardous chemical fertilisers will be lessened. The implementation of these revolutionary procedures shows that St Andrews Country Club is a strong advocate of sustainable sports. This development has also inspired other courses to initiate their own environment-friendly irrigation measures.