Irrigating with recycled wastewater
Greenacres club manager Brendon Whitley says recycled water, which will be used to irrigate the course, is a win-win for everyone. Photo: Anne Hardie.
Greenacres Golf Club is future-proofing its irrigation with plans to use treated water from the Bell Island wastewater treatment plant to keep the grass green.
Manager Brendon Whitley says recycling wastewater to irrigate grass on the golf club’s grounds reflects the changing climate and the need to treat water as a valuable resource.
“It’s a big thing, not just for us, but regionally and nationally. There’s a number of entities following it closely. And it’s free water. It’s a win-win for us, the councils and the community.”
The Best Island golf club has relied on two wells for irrigation and one of those salts-up during the irrigation season, so Brendon says the additional water will help.
Treated wastewater from the Nelson Regional Sewerage Business Unit (NRSBU) on nearby Bell Island is discharged into the estuary on an outgoing tide. The facility is jointly owned by Nelson City Council and Tasman District Council and treats domestic wastewater from Nelson, south through to Wakefield and Mapua, as well as industrial wastewater.
At the golf club, the wastewater will go through UV treatment and be diluted with well water to ensure it is safe for golfers on the course.
The club has spent about $120,000 from its development fund, to add more water tanks to its “tank farm’, UV unit, pumps and pipes. It has laid 1.2km of pipes through the golf course to connect with pipes being laid across the estuary from nearby Bell Island by NRSBU. Brendon says the club’s board member Tony Mursell has managed the project for the club and it has been a team effort with the sewerage entity.
The infrastructure to deliver wastewater to the golf club is expected to be completed for irrigation to begin in February. The club has consent to take about 350,000 cubic metres of treated wastewater every day from Bell Island, which will be stored in its tank farm.
“So it is quite significant as far as future-proofing this course when we talk about climate warming and expectations of droughts into the future. It’s also doing the right thing for the environment.
“We’re moving to a point where water is becoming quite a resource. Overseas, a lot of countries use recycled water a lot.”
Priority for the treated wastewater will be given to the greens, tees and fairways of the golf course and Brendon says the rough will be left to dry out as it usually does. The island sits in the Waimea Inlet and the golf course flows over undulating sand that dries out fast through the summer dry period.
Nelson City Council general manager for regional services, Nathan Clarke, says the Bell Island facility has to deal with large amounts of wastewater and the Greenacres irrigation scheme helps reduce the amount going into the estuary.
“Our long-term goal is to try and find more options to reuse water throughout the region. It may be sports fields, industrial processes and irrigating more on to land.”