Improving golf course drainage

Kevin King, an agricultural engineer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (right) and soil scientist Jim Balogh of Spectrum Research Inc. are continuing to work on improving the quality of water discharged from golf courses. Photo courtesy of Spectrum Research Inc.

Teresa Carson

Protecting water quality has always been important, but it has become even more so as the world’s population increases and water supplies for all uses become scarcer.

 To preserve the health of watersheds near golf courses, new research is looking for ways to make sure that water draining from golf courses is as clean as possible.

Kevin King, an agricultural engineer with the Soil Drainage Research Unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, has been testing filter cartridges attached to drainage pipe outlets on golf courses. The cartridges contain materials like those used to treat drinking water and water for home aquariums. The objective of the research is to determine whether commercially available filters can be used to remove nutrients and pesticides from water draining from golf course greens.

King has been working with Jim Moore, director of the USGA Green Section’s Construction Education Program, to monitor a creeping bentgrass green at Ridgewood Country Club in Waco, Texas. King says the green they are using at Ridgewood CC “is an ideal site for this research.” The green is divided into two 4,000-square-foot sections. Each section has a separate drainage system and distinct construction. The two halves of the green were fitted with different filters.

Two types of filters were installed at the Texas site in October 2006 and evaluated until June 2007 when excessive rainfall in Texas caused flooding. An activated carbon and zeolite filter successfully reduced the amount of pesticides and the total nitrogen in the drainage water, but the other filter was not effective. Based on these findings, data collection was suspended so that new filter materials could be identified and tested. Laboratory testing has indicated that a new filter is removing approximately 50 percent of the soluble phosphorus and 25 percent to 60 percent of the pesticides. As part of a larger study of golf course water quality, King and James Balogh of Spectrum Research have recently installed this new filter at Northland Country Club in Duluth, Minn. As in Texas, they are testing the ability of the filters to remove nutrients and pesticides from the golf course drainage and thereby reduce their overall presence from the watershed. King says that field data collection in Minnesota is just beginning and describes the work as “ongoing.”

King and fellow USDA-ARS researchers in University Park, Pa., and scientists at Penn State are working with the cartridge filters and other designs as well as identifying additional materials or products that have the ability to strip nutrients and pesticides from drainage waters. As these materials are identified, they will be tested in the laboratory and in field sites. New work at the Texas site is slated for later this year. Although no perfect solutions have been found, King and his co-workers are optimistic that their work will result in cleaner golf course drainage.

The cooperating companies are Agri Drain Corp. near Adair, Iowa; KriStar Enterprises Inc., Santa Rosa, Calif.; and Spectrum Research, Duluth, Minn.

Teresa Carson is GCM’s senior science editor.