How Golf Courses Deal With Wastewater

Maintaining a golf course has a lot of challenges. Often, one of those challenges is how to clean your golf course care equipment. The equipment you use to clean and maintain your golf course very quickly finds grass clippings, soil, and other debris enmeshed in it, and you need to remove these materials regularly. The type of washing you need to do to clean that equipment, however, creates wastewater — and improper wastewater disposal procedures could see you running afoul of U.S. EPA regulations and receiving unwanted fines.

Professional Golf Course Wastewater Solutions

If you are washing your own golf course equipment — even if you have a dedicated location for washing — chemicals and other contaminants from your wastewater can still find its way into groundwater, local streams, and other environmental features. Professional wastewater solutions that allow you to recycle wastewater, manage solids, and remove grass clippings, all while staying in compliance with EPA regulations.

Most wastewater solutions for golf courses run on a closed-loop system. A closed-loop system can be built above or in-ground, with the main principle being that the wastewater is collected in a drain, pushed through to a solids management system, treated, and ready to be used again for washing.  This process, although costlier than a DIY option, often saves money in the long run due to the amount of money saved from using recycled water for your washing needs. The cost of a wash rack is insignificant compared to the costs of cleaning soil or groundwater contamination, not to mention paying EPA fines, which is why many golf courses are investing in these wash areas.

If you are not familiar with the idea of a closed-loop wash rack, it is simply a fully contained wash system. No water escapes the rack, so you can fully wash any piece of equipment or vehicle you have. You can clean off any detritus it picks up without worrying that any of your cleaning solution or any of the debris that is washed off the equipment will find its way back onto your golf course.

You can also actually reclaim the water with these systems. All the water you use is directed into a filter that cleans it, so you can use it for washing again — on top of protecting the environment, you save money on water costs as well.

DIY Golf Course Wastewater Solutions

If a professional closed-loop system isn't in budget, it's still best practice to have some sort of system in place to collect clippings and biproducts.  Some golf courses find they can't afford commercial systems, or they don't want to deal with the monthly service fees to maintain them.  In these cases, it is possible to create your own wash pad.  Stonebridge County Club created a wash pad that not only collects, filters, and recycles wash-water, but also collects sand and grass clippings. These grass clippings can be beneficial to turf health if recycled, as they have traces of nitrogen and other nutrients, but they can be potentially harmful to waterways if they're not filtered.

The system at Stonebridge has a filter to removes petroleum products and flows into a drain where organic matter and chemicals are broken down by plants and microbes. The staff can then gather the clippings and recycle them back onto the golf course.  This DIY solution eliminated the odor of rotting clippings and saved the golf course from using an estimated 50 percent more water than they currently do since the system is so much easier to use than what they formerly had in place.

A Solution For You

Whether you decide it's best to invest in a commercial system or design and create your own, it is best practice to have some sort of system in place for washing equipment. Both commercial and DIY systems have their pros and cons, but the water saved in the washing process, EPA compliance, and safe water recycling benefits significantly outweigh the costs of these systems.