[Don_Mahaffey]

What is your water footprint?

We’re always hearing about our carbon footprint. What about our water footprint? To me, this could possibly be the best measure of true sustainability. Consider:

1. How much water do you use per acre of turf? 100%, 80%, 60% of ET? How efficient is your irrigation system? The argument we always hear is more irrigation system means less water. I’m not convinced.

2. How much water do you use moving water? A staggering amount of water is used to generate electrical energy. How many times do you move water? Do you over pressurize to meet pressure requirements at an isolated high spot? Use hydraulic brakes to slow down an over pressurized system?  Do you have mult- sized VFD driven motors/pumps to meet hand watering and spot watering needs? How efficient is your energy management?

3. How much water is used to create the synthetic fertilizers and chemicals you use? Huge amounts of water are used in the chemical industry.

4. How much water is needed to propagate the latest greatest drought tolerant grasses?  All those fields require irrigation, and what about the grasses that are studied for years but eventually phased out? All of that study requires irrigation. Mother Nature has been experimenting with drought tolerant grasses for thousands of years. Is it better to try and out do her, or learn to work with what she has already given us?

5. How much water is needed to manufacture all that iron we use and the fuel to power it? Manufacturing requires water as does fuel production. Tractors pulling those old style gangs may not look cool, but I’ll take their water footprint over all the machinery and fuel required to replace them.

It takes water to maintain a golf course, but the hidden water costs are huge, and may just balance out the common belief that a wet region always uses a lot less water then a dryer area, if the dryer area is better managed. Especially if recycled water usage is factored in.

I believe calculating a golf course’s water footprint would be a great measure of sustainability.

[Tom_Doak]

Don:

One of my friends at Cornell had his grad students working on a carbon footprint for a golf course.  He said it was looking pretty good until they got to the energy required to produce fertilizers and turf chemicals, but those numbers were amazing to him.  I hope that's not true for water, too.

Your questions look like the start of another graduate study -- surely way above my head.  But, is your second question about quantifying water use in hydro power?  Is that really relevant, if you're just letting all that water go downstream for other uses?  Your questions about the irrigation system are good ones.

[Adam_Messix]

Don--

You ask some great questions and I have enjoyed reading your sustainable golf threads, they are interesting and totally pertient.

Let me ask You and Tom a couple of questions:  Would going organic in maintaining a golf course make it less dependant on irrigation?  Can you take a non organic course and make it organic directly or piecemeal over time? 

I've always felt that water is going to be the biggest issue that golf maintenance is going to deal with in the future and it will be interesting to see if and how healthy and quality turf conditions can be maintained with less water usage. 

Thanks.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Tom,
Here are a couple of references, but I'm not convinced they are impartial.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-saving-energy-means-conserving-water

Here are the Virginia Water Resources Research Center results by fuel source:

water consumption by type of electricity generation:

[Jim_Kennedy]

62,600 gals. of water     = 2,000 pounds of steel
48,000 gals. of water     = 2,000 pounds of plastic
3,000,000 gals. of water  = 2,000 pairs of denim jeans (amt. of water used to grow the cotton, more is used to dye/weather the jeans)
40,000 gals. of water      = 2,000 apples (the kind we eat)
22,000,000 gals. of water =2,000 bushels of wheat, which makes 144,000 loaves of white bread or 200,000 loaves of wheat bread
                                        eating wheat, not white, is more 'sustainable  
51,000,000 gals. of water = 1 golf course. The average U.S. golf course uses 51,000,000 gallons of water annually, or 157 Acre Feet.
                                          source:Golf Course Business article in 2009. (I couldn't bring myself to post the number for 2,000 courses)

    

[Don_Mahaffey]

Jim,
please don't post the numbers for sour dough

[Jim_Kennedy]

Don,
It's the same number for sourdough, whether you make it white or wheat.    

p.s. It takes 1.5 gals of water to make the plastic bottle that's used to sell 16ozs. of water.    

[Ben Sims]

Don,

I have a suspicion that bullet #1 on your post is probably 80% or more of the wasted water/energy out there.  And bullet #2 accounts for the majority of the remainder.  

This is the first time in any of these threads where we've used the term "footprint."  What a great term to describe the impact of a golf course.  From the disturbance of native soils all the way to the fossil fuel usages.  Off the top of my head here's a list of reductions.  It would be cool if several of our posters could put a "+" or "-" next to items on the list to denote if we would truly be sacrificing conditions for reducing input on those items

1.  Water used for irrigation
2.  Fertilization inputs
3.  Mowing frequency
4.  Plant growth regulators
5.  Disturbance/movement of native soils during building
6.  Fuel
7.  Fungicide
8.  Topdressing
9.  Soil cultivation (core aeration, slicing, verticutting)
10.  Drainage (linear feet of drainage, basins, tile, etc.)
11. Mass of irrigation system (linear feet of pipe, #'s of heads)

There is no doubt we need many of these things.  But the common teaching has been that bringing these things together in mass (concentrating combat power at the decisive place and time) is the way to provide good turf.  I subscribe to the principle of economy of force (allocating minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts).  There has to be reductions somewhere.  But how many sups are willing to jeopardize their $80K/yr job over a $5K fungicide treatment that is less than 1% of their budget?

[JC Jones]

Don,
It's the same number for sourdough, whether you make it white or wheat.    

p.s. It takes 1.5 gals of water to make the plastic bottle that's used to sell 16ozs. of water.    

Thank you for posting this.  Whatever we change in golf course maintenance is totally irrelevant if the guy riding the mower is drinking bottled water.  Or worse, the golf course is giving away bottled water on the first tee to make the golfers feel good.  Bottled water should be a mortal sin.

[Jim Nelson]

Well, thank goodness we have lots out there.  "Something like 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons (326 million trillion gallons) of the stuff (roughly 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters) can be found on our planet."  Of course, most of it is salt.  But the same article made some reference to a couple of billion gallons of water sitting on the shelves of our refrigerators at any given time.

So as I sit here looking out at the desert golf course, sipping my bottled water, waiting for the sun to come up, the mowers criss-crossing the perfectly green fairways, I wonder.  Just how long will this all last?  There will come a time when the cost of keeping this whole area habitable will be so high that people begin to abandon the desert living concept.  When will Southern Highlands go back to desert?  In my lifetime?  Probably not.  My grandchildren? Likely.  Unless, that is, we radically change how we approach water and energy.

And BTW, the water bill here is over 1 M a year.

Good topic. 

 

[Jon Wiggett]

What is your water footprint?

We’re always hearing about our carbon footprint. What about our water footprint? To me, this could possibly be the best measure of true sustainability. Consider:

1. How much water do you use per acre of turf? 100%, 80%, 60% of ET? How efficient is your irrigation system? The argument we always hear is more irrigation system means less water. I’m not convinced.

I have no irrigation system at my course so use no irrigation water (except rain)

2. How much water do you use moving water? A staggering amount of water is used to generate electrical energy. How many times do you move water? Do you over pressurize to meet pressure requirements at an isolated high spot? Use hydraulic brakes to slow down an over pressurized system?  Do you have mult- sized VFD driven motors/pumps to meet hand watering and spot watering needs? How efficient is your energy management?

Again zero, though some electricity is used in the machine shed and for cleaning the machines (though the latter is rain water harvesting)

3. How much water is used to create the synthetic fertilizers and chemicals you use? Huge amounts of water are used in the chemical industry.

Not sure though I use very little fertiliser 0.1g/m2 last two years in total just on the greens. I hope to be producing all my own feeds by the end of next year.



4. How much water is needed to propagate the latest greatest drought tolerant grasses?  All those fields require irrigation, and what about the grasses that are studied for years but eventually phased out? All of that study requires irrigation. Mother Nature has been experimenting with drought tolerant grasses for thousands of years. Is it better to try and out do her, or learn to work with what she has already given us?

I agree with your last statement

5. How much water is needed to manufacture all that iron we use and the fuel to power it? Manufacturing requires water as does fuel production. Tractors pulling those old style gangs may not look cool, but I’ll take their water footprint over all the machinery and fuel required to replace them.

Tractor with gangs and hand mower (also use a sythe mostly instead of the strimmer )

It takes water to maintain a golf course, but the hidden water costs are huge, and may just balance out the common belief that a wet region always uses a lot less water then a dryer area, if the dryer area is better managed. Especially if recycled water usage is factored in.

I believe calculating a golf course’s water footprint would be a great measure of sustainability.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Don,

For over forty (40) years I've advocated for reducing water volume and reducing the areas under high maintainance.

That's been a hard argument to win in good economic times as the "cost to produce a superior* product" wasn't an overwhelming issue.

In tourist/resort/winter states, like Florida and Arizona, I can see the cost of water rising precipitously as most members or private clubs are out of state residents who can't vote, and as such, can't offer much resistance to what amounts to a tax.

Water, natural, Recycled or effluent water will cost more.

While the cost may be pennies now, look what will happen to club budgets as the cost approaches $ 1.00 per gallon.

If clubs don't start reducing water usage they'll be at financial risk in the future.

Golfers need to focus on the quality of playing surfaces, not their color.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I was checking out some water facts and found that the county of Los angeles recycles a tad over 170 million gals. of waste water per day for use in irrigation (including to 20 golf course), industry, recharging aquifers, and they even send some to an evironmental area in the desert.

They do still send 360 million gals per day into the sea, and it seems that they do it because they don't have the capacity to treat it. They'd probably use more of it if they could produce it, and what an infrastructure project that would make.

They could also build a pipeline with a catchy name, like "Load"stone", and send it on a 350 mile journey to Phoenix. No worries if the thing "leaked".      

 

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