BAD WATER, EVIAN OR EFFLUENT ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

For a good number of years, certain jurisdictions have been proponents of converting the golf course watering supply from city/local/well water to effluent water.

The cost of water can be a form of tax, especially when the water is used to irrigate golf courses in resort areas where the members are mostly non-residents.

The "sell" was, that the water was cheaper, beneficial to the environment, reduced the volume demands for city/local/well water, and that there would be no negative impact on the golf course.

Recently, several golf courses in South Florida that use effluent water began to notice changes in the percolation rates of their greens and the presence of more algae than normal.  Tests suggest that higher levels of microbes may be responsible for the problem.

Now, the bigger problem and $ 64,000 question is,
How do you cure the problem when you're limited to one source of water, and the jurisdiction may be totally unconcerned with the problems that the golf courses are experiencing.

As a condition to converting to effluent water can a golf course negotiate a performance standard (almost contradictory to the nature of effluent water) with the jurisdiction supplying the water ?

Will a deterioration in the quality of effluent water drive up the maintainance costs while at the same time degrading the playing conditions ?  

Why would a golf course convert to effluent, and can the jurisdictions increase the cost of city/local/well water to the point where they have no choice ?

At the supermarket today, I noticed that they had Evian bottled water stacked near the registers and on sale.  
I didn't notice one buyer.  Let them donate the bottles to the needy, and don't restock the shelves.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat,
A course may convert because in some places, like Tucson, if they use nothing but effluent water there are no restrictions on how much they can use. Grass in this area requires 5 acre feet per acre per year to survive, or about 130.5 million gals per course per year. There must be a tremendous savings in that.

I didn't know there were Florida courses restricted to effluent only watering. I don't know if a quality contract can be made between towns and courses but a long term solution might be the installation of addittional filtration of the incoming effluent.
Reverse osmosis plants are being used at several courses in Fla to treat salty or brackish water and this is a cheaper alternative to purchasing city water. Building storage ponds would seem viable in Fla, especially to collect rainwater, and this water could be used to flush the greens on a regular schedule. Fla gets so much rainfall that it seems the problems you mention are only becoming a problem due to the drought like conditions of late.


Along with the Evian the store should have Dannon yogurt, Lea & Perrins and Worcester sauces on sale as they are also a part of the Danone group which owns the Evian brand. Much of the dairy product for Dannon USA is purchased from American farmers.

The Department of Transportation buys French made helicopters that servicemen like my son, who is in the Coast Guard, use daily. I think they are required to change out the engines due to a requirement that a certain percentage of the parts in these copters must be of American origin.
Go figure. I wonder if the techies doing the swaps are drinking Evian down there in the Texas heat?

[TEPaul]

I know practically nothing about water quality for irrigation of golf courses but I'd think a club would want to thoroughly check whatever they're using or about to in any way possible concerning any negative effects of water quality to their agronomy or golf course. Possibly a filtering system can take care of potential problems--but that might take enormous research as to what to filter out or to supplement.

Don't know if it's a fact or not but Lancaster C.C., Lancaster Pa. suspected at some point if the river water they use may have negatively effected some of their greens this past summer during the severe drought. The thought was the river had gotten real low and possibly the irrigation system was pulling in some crap that was less than beneficial.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

There were problems when courses in Florida drew their water from canals.  You don't know what type of chemicals, pesticides, fertilzers, etc., etc., have washed into them from farmlands and other facilities.

Building and operating a filtration facility may be expensive to do.

Building retention ponds/lakes is a function of available land and the permiting process, and therefore impossible for some clubs.

But, the pressure, vis a vis the pricing mechanism of water versus effluent water is increasing.

Combine water problems with cooler temperatures and the untested nature of the newer grasses and you may have a very difficult situation for superintendents to deal with.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat,
The average rainfall for central florida is 50" per year. Most months see between 2" and 4" with the hottest months of June thru Sept. receiving around 7" per month. By contrast Tucson receives an average of 11" for the whole year.
If 60" of water is needed for a seasons irrigation in Arizona but Florida is receiving 50" in rainfall how bad could the problem be? It would seem that the widespread and bountiful pattern of natural rainfall would be adequate to leach away any ill effects from effluent water, don't you think?

[Larry_Rodgers]

The issues with effluent are vast and the conditions you describe are a "normal" effect of effluent. The soils will continue to "tighten up" due to the growing bicarbonates. The best advice is to get water and soil samples to a testing labratory. Have them tested to include PH & Bicarbonates. There are a few "suppliments" such as the ESP unit and S02 generators.

  At first blush, bicarbonate doesn't seem especially destructive. It's just a lonely anion seeking a long-term relationship with an attractive cation. But that cation is likely to be calcium and the bond the two ions create allows sodium to remain in the soil profile. Sodium is the principal cause of silting and surface sealing.

"Bicarbonate isn't a bad actor per se--sodium is--but bicarbonate allows sodium to become the soil's dominant ion, and that's bad," says Jon Voth, lab supervisor for Prodica, LLC.

High bicarbonate or alkalinity can also reduce the effectiveness of certain pesticides. Bicarbonate ties up magnesium, and it can form precipitates with pesticides.
It's even to blame for the short life of teakettles in Davis, Calif. "Here in Davis, teapots don't last long because you get that buildup of white caking. That cake is calcium and magnesium carbonates created when bicarbonate bonds with those elements," explains Mike Singer, professor of soil science in the Department of Land, Air & Water Resources (LA WR) at the University of California-Davis.

N-pHuric fertilizer and other strong acids are the usual solution to high bicarbonate in water. Lowering a water's pH to 6.5 removes about half of the bicarbonate; lowering it to 6.0 removes even more.

That means less bicarbonate is available to form precipitates that can plug irrigation sprinklers and emitters. A slightly acidic water also lowers soil pH for a time, making pH-sensitive nutrients like iron, zinc, magnesium, manganese, and phosphorus available to crops. It also breaks up calcium carbonate in the soil, freeing calcium to displace sodium on soil particle exchange sites. The sodium becomes soluble and eventually moves below the root zone.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Larry,
Would the amount of rainfall have a positive effect on lowering the ph?
Would it help in leaching out the bicarbonates?

[Bill_McBride]

The owners of Tiger Point GC here in Pensacola FL made a deal with the devil and agreed to use only effluent water from the local water treatment plan for their West course.  The bad part of agreeing to accept this "free" water is that they have a large minimum amount which must be sprinkled onto the greens tees and fairways.  Since we already get > 60" of rain a year, at times Tiger Point West is literally under water!  It has always had drainage problems, and all that water just aggravates the problem.  Tough to be "firm and fast" under those conditions.................

[Don_Mahaffey]

Pat,
Most effluent water used on golf courses is tertiary treated water that is legal for body contact. In other words, a course can water and golfers can play and come into contact with the water when its on the grass, or irrigation repairs can be made. There are standards for this type of water, but I believe it has more to do with things like e-coli bacteria counts and heavy metals, not the salts that cause golf courses so much trouble. In fact, due to the terrorism scare, some municipalities are going away from using chlorine gas and are using a sodium based compound, sodium hydrochloride??? or something like that which is much less lethal to people then chlorine gas, but isn't very good for sodium levels in turf. So, to answer your question about a golf course negotiating water standards before the acceptance of effluent, it certainly can be insisted that the water be safe, but I doubt it can be taken much farther then that.
The key to using effluent is a knowledgeable Supt. who knows how to use dirty water. It can be done, as the quality of turf on many AZ courses shows. Greens constructed to drain very well and flush, and good agronomics can yield high quality turf.

Jim,
The effluent in Tucson is mandated by Pima County law. No golf course developed in Pima County since 1989 can use ground water if effluent is available. The effluent is not free, in fact it's quite expensive @ $494/acre foot. The average course will use in the neighborhood of 500 acre feet which means a water bill of around a quarter mil annually. When I left Tucson the Arizona Dept of Water Resources was in the process of developing water allotments for effluent just as they have for ground water. Soon, it will not be the case that you can use as much as you can afford.

[A_Clay_Man]

Pat- One idea which maybe less expensive than a massive filtration system is one which uses ultra violet light to purify the water. There is a downside which I believe is that the UV kills everything in the water, which I assume implies more additives more chemicals and more bad PR.

[DJames]

This article:  Managing Turf with Effluent Water
by David M. Kopec, Ph.D. may be of interest to you.

http://www.geoflow.com/wastewater/turf.htm

[Patrick_Mucci_Jr]

Jim Kennedy,

Most of the rain in Florida occurs June thru September, but then the winter/dormant season begins, as the golfers migrate south, and the traffic and stress on the greens increases.

South Florida like many other locations has experienced droughts from time to time, season to season.

I don't see rolling the dice with Mother Nature and rain as a viable alterative, or solution to the recent effluent problems.

I have several questions for some of the very knowledgeable individuals who responded.

With so many new grasses, especially dwarf bermuda grasses having originated recently, and with the very recent introduction of effluent water in South Florida, what kind of research with respect to the long term effects could have been conducted prior to its introduction ?

What kind of data base exists to demonstrate the long range impact of effluent water on greens that were never built with effluent water in mind ?

Will future greens, intended to be irrigated by effluent water, have different design and construction specifications ?

Would golf courses be better off avoiding a conversion to effluent water until more studies and data are available ?

Thanks.