With an average size of 150 acres, golf courses across the country require a lot of water to keep the greens, well, green.
But that need becomes particularly pronounced when an extreme drought persists in North Texas.
One reader asked Curious Texas, “Will Dallas move to the use of effluent water for golf courses, etc. amid the water crisis?”
City of Dallas officials said this practice is already underway at some courses. That means the six courses operated by the city – Cedar Crest, Keeton Park, Luna Vista, Stevens Park, Tenison Glen and Tenison Highlands – are not using only drinking water to keep their luscious putting greens alive.
First, a few definitions
It’s probably worth defining some basic water terminology first.
Effluent water is treated wastewater, which can be reused in industrial processes to resupply groundwater sources or for irrigation, according to ProChem, a wastewater treatment company.
This is not exactly the same thing as non-potable water, which is any water not safe for human consumption. But effluent water is a common type of non-potable water.
And, as one may have guessed, potable water is water fit for drinking.
So how are these water types used on Dallas golf courses?
There are dozens of golf courses across the D-FW metropolitan area, but only six operated by the City of Dallas.
The city only categorizes irrigation at these courses by whether the water is potable or not.
Luna Vista and Tenison Highlands use non-potable water to keep the greens healthy, and Keeton Park uses a mixture of non-potable and potable water. The remaining courses – Cedar Crest, Stevens Park and Tenison Glen – all use exclusively potable water.
The courses using non-potable water pull from White Rock Creek and the Trinity River, said Andrea Hawkins, a city spokesperson for the parks department.
Dallas uses a number of tactics to conserve water at public courses, according to Britney Han, a spokesperson for the city. Those include:
Letting environmental conditions guide the frequency of watering, instead of a fixed schedule
Using wetting agents to help soil absorb water and limit the amount of irrigation needed
Employing long, slow watering patterns to help minimize runoff, particularly in areas with a lot of clay in the soil
Using non-potable water when available
How much water does Dallas use to irrigate public courses?
Dallas uses an average of 253 million gallons a year of both potable and non-potable water to irrigate all six public courses. Together, those courses total about 770 acres.
It’s the same amount of water that about 8,500 average Americans use in one year – similar to the population of Highland Park.
Notably though, not all of it is drinking water. About 54% of the water used on the city’s golf courses is non-potable – about 137 million gallons a year.
At just over half of the irrigation supply, Dallas’ public courses seem to be maintained in a more environmentally friendly manner than the industry at large. Only 12% of U.S. golf courses irrigate with recycled water, according to Golf Sustainable, with many course leaders citing a lack of available wastewater.
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This article originally published at How much drinking water is used for irrigating public golf courses in Dallas? Curious Texas investigates.