Golf Course Water Supply
The average 18-hole championship golf course irrigates 90-100 acres of fairways, tees and greens. Additionally, surrounding green belt areas and home-site lawn irrigation may be added to the totals.
The volume of water required to irrigate 95 acres on a per annum basis is approximately ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION (150,000,000) gallons, based upon average Water Management District permitted use allocations. Up to now, the primary sources of irrigation water have been vertical wells and surface water impoundments in lakes within a golf course.
On an average-day basis, 450,000 to 500,000 gallons per day (gpd) are utilized for golf course irrigation, but a peak day requirement can be more than 600,000 gpd. Unfortunately, in much of the Southeastern United States, the peak day needs are experienced during dry, hot, and low rainfall months, which also is the time that impounded surface water levels are low and aquifers are strained form heavy pumping withdrawals to meet other water needs such as public potable water supply, commercial/industrial, agriculture and additional irrigation needs.
THE WATER SUPPLY SOURCE PROBLEM CONTINUES TO GROW, with little being accomplished politically or through the development of new technology to supplement or relieve the problem. The basic regulatory approach is to limit and restrict consumptive use in order to protect the available resource.
Hydrotech Environmental Systems can provide a new and unique means of utilizing the shallow aquifers as a supplemental water source for golf course and other irrigation requirements. This shallow water aquifer is directly recharged by rainfall during the annual wet season. Recharge is an important benefit of installing horizontal wells in the shallow aquifer since many of the chemicals associated with golf course maintenance are re-cycled back into the system.
For every acre-foot of ground below Florida’s groundwater table, there is as much as 80,000 gallons of water. Therefore, an aquifer with a saturated thickness of fifteen feet into which a properly constructed horizontal well is installed, could yield up to one million gallons of water as an irrigation source. Another benefit is in many areas water withdrawn from the surficial aquifer generally has much less mineralization (with the exception of iron) and has a faster recharge rate than water withdrawn from deep aquifers. The larger drawdown caused by high-volume conventional vertical wells has previously made tapping this resource unfeasible in many areas. And lastly, another important consideration is that much less energy is required to extract water from the surficial aquifer, thus reducing long-term maintenance cost.
Hydrotech Environmental Systems provides an innovative method of extracting groundwater from the shallow surficial aquifers with its patented equipment and technology specifically designed for these installations. We can provide clients with unsurpassed well efficiencies due to the increased capture zone and oversized collection pipe unavailable from the competition. Furthermore, our custom built equipment can install a backfill filter pack material to create a preferential flow path to increase flow in areas of relatively low hydraulic conductivity. Most importantly, the entire length of the trenched well system lies within the desired formation, not just the small screened section as in vertical wells.
Through proven Hydrotech Environmental Systems technology and scientific study, we can design and install a complete system with the ability to recover the recharge water for irrigation uses.
Two additional beneficial features attendant to utilizing the Hydrotech Environmental Systems system for golf course irrigation water source are:
- The systems allow for increasing the capture and beneficial use of ground waters, thereby minimizing the relatively rapid and ecologically harmful “runoff” and adding to the ability to provide enhanced retention water.
- Many golf courses have “playing areas” that are constructed on ground surfaces that are marginal for other development and therefore conducive only to recreational uses. These areas tend to be “low” and “wet”, which provide major drainage problems in order to maintain the playing surfaces. The Hydrotech Environmental Systems system, when installed in such areas, is not only a good water supply source, but also provides the ability to control water table elevations to minimize, if not eliminate the “wet area” problems on the fairways and roughs.