In recent months, environmental issues including stormwater retention, preservation of wildlife habitats, and wetland preservation and mitigation on golf courses have received increasing attention. These issues require careful thought throughout the permitting, design, construction and management processes, in addition to the existing focus on maintaining overall water quality.
Protecting water quality is a critical responsibility of golf courses to both their surrounding environment and community. Here are a few key ways you can protect your water quality with golf course water features.
Sand Caps and Topdressing
In the Pacific Northwest, building courses with extensive sand caps and topdressing are becoming increasingly popular. This is done to help golfing continue through mild and wet winters. The sandy soil profile required provides for rapid filtration of rainfall. This helps to reduce the potential for surface runoff while providing a high volume of temporary water storage in the pore spaces of soil (stormwater retention). This also improves stability for both maintenance equipment and golfers.
However, this sandy soil can also create an environment of increased mobility of fertilizer nutrients that are used on your golf course. As a result, measures to mitigate this mobility should be accomplished through design, construction and management practices.
Vegetated Buffers
One of the smartest ways to protect the quality of surface water quality is by using riparian vegetated buffers on the banks of your golf course’s wetlands, streams or other bodies of water. These buffers can function as filters to catch nutrients, sediments, pesticides or pollutants before they ever reach surface waters. Placing buffer strips or vegetation alongside bodies of water or throughout drainage channels and swales helps prevent soil erosion to further protect water quality.
Pond Liners
Pond liners for your golf course and its water features can improve your water quality substantially. By using food-grade reinforced polyethylene (RPE) liners in irrigation structures and ponds, you can eliminate the threat of potential additives leaching into the water and harming the environment. RPE liners can help improve water quality due to the following characteristics of their material:
- Can be repeatedly cleaned and disinfected without losing performance
- Certified by NSF61 for potable water containment
- Certified fish and plant safe
- Contain no additives or chemicals
- Provide thermal stability
- High resistance to UV exposure
- Strength, durability and puncture resistance
RPE contains no chemicals or additives. This minimizes the threat of poor water quality due to harmful additives leaching into the water. Keep in mind that other liner materials can contain plasticizers, which are harmful to water quality as well as any fish or plants that may reside in or near your water features. Likewise, BTL’s AquaArmor Pond Liners are certified NSF61 for potable water containment.
An opaque liner that is UV resistant and blocks direct sunlight is critical to your water quality. Direct sunlight encourages algae growth, which can be harmful to your system. RPE liners have both a high UV resistance and provide thermal stability to improve your water quality.
In addition to lining golf course water features, BTL’s AquaArmor liners have been used for waterski lakes, cable wake lakes, swimming and fishing ponds, and even as dam liners to help keep our environment safe.
