Credit: Gisborne District Council
Poverty Bay Golf Club is Leading the way when it comes to environmentally friendly solutions for course irrigation by reusing the water used to wash salad greens by food producer LeaderBrand.
From LeaderBrand’s Gisborne salad house, a 600-meter water pipeline travels beneath Lytton Road and around the ninth hole to an irrigation pond with lining.
According to the NZ Herald, by recycling wash water that would otherwise end up in the municipal wastewater treatment system, it helps the course have more irrigation water available and may lessen the strain on the nearby aquifer.
Recently, LeaderBrand received resource consent from Gisborne District Council to release 675 cubic meters of treated wash water into the pond, which irrigates roughly 13.5 hectares of fairways, greens, and tees.
Water Shortfall Solution
Poverty Bay Golf Club greenkeeper Rowan Clark said the golf course previously used water from the Te Hapara Sands aquifer.
“Reductions in the allocation of water from the aquifer have meant that the golf course was facing a water shortfall as it sought to renew its resource consent in 2022,” Clark said.
“The golf course is situated on light soils and our region can experience dry periods, so a reliable supply of irrigation water is critical to keeping our greens, tees and fairways in good playing condition. This will be an increasing concern with dry weather events occurring more frequently in this region.”
LeaderBrand chief executive Richard McPhail said: “For the last few years, we have been looking at new ways we could reuse our processed water from our salad house. Over the summer we use the wash water to transport our squash from the fields into our packhouse.
“This has enabled us to reduce our site’s water use during the squash season, and another bonus is that there is sufficient residual sanitiser to allow us to stop using chlorine in the squash packhouse as well.
“We are extremely grateful to everyone involved in making this project a huge success. Everyone has invested a considerable amount of time. We’d like to also extend thanks to the Gisborne District Council and Poverty Bay Golf Club personnel for producing a great working system that has found benefits for all parties.”
