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Active monitoring of irrigation water quality is becoming an increasingly important activity for superintendents to undertake for the health of their turfgrass. In fact, experts say that unless you have a really great domestic water supply (and even some of those, they say, aren’t as great as they used to be), you should be testing either on a monthly, quarterly or twice-annual basis based on the type of water.
“You could be brewing some problems under the surface if you don’t monitor your water,” says Jeff Bowman, senior project manager for Irrigation Consulting. “Poor water quality, at least certain constituents of it, may not manifest itself to the casual eye, even the superintendent’s, until things reach a tipping point. And once that tipping point is reached, things could start to decline more rapidly where the soil structure no longer promotes good filtration and good leaching or penetration of water.”
 Poor water quality could result in a soil structure that no longer promotes good filtration. |
The other tricky thing is that water quality changes over time. You might notice something about your turfgrass, realize you need to get your water tested and then determine the quality. But you can’t just assume the water will never change from that point on.
“Let’s say you’re in a coastal environment and on the fringe of the saltwater/freshwater interface and you’re not monitoring the groundwater table,” Bowman says. “You could get to the point where you’re transitioning from fresh to brackish water. It’s not common, but it could happen.”
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Bowman also cited the example of using effluent water where you’re relying on a water purveyor to give you a certain quality, but you end up getting a bad plug from the wastewater treatment plant.
“You would want to know that,” he adds.
Bowman sees the most critical need to monitor water at courses that use reclaimed water. However, he witnesses more and more courses that use wells as a source, cautioning that they need to be careful, too.
“I’ve seen wells in the Northeast where there is weathering within the rock formations that can add dissolved solids,” he says. “I’m seeing more and more wells that aren’t as clean as we would like them to be.”
Brian Whitlark, agronomist with the USGA Southwest Region, agrees that regular water monitoring is especially important for courses that use recycled water.
“Water coming from wastewater treatment plants has a tendency to change over the course of a year depending on the waste stream coming into the plant,” says Whitlark. “The amount of nutrients that come from washing clothes and things like that all contribute to salts in the water, and that fluctuates sometimes pretty significantly throughout the course of a year. That’s why I recommend that courses that use recycled water test on a monthly or quarterly basis – especially if you’re a superintendent who has just taken over a course and you aren’t familiar with the quality of water your course is receiving.”
For those courses not on recycled water that are maybe pumping a saline source of well water, Whitlark believes testing once or twice a year is enough to be able to make decisions on the quality of that water and whether or not you need to treat it.
As far as the testing itself goes, Whitlark advises superintendents to send a sample to a local lab. Samples should be obtained at the source or incoming pipe, if it’s accessible. If you have multiple irrigation lakes, a sample should be obtained from each. A sample should also be taken from a quick coupler or sprinkler furthest away from the pump station.
“You want to get an idea of the source, what’s sitting in the lake and ultimately what’s going out on the turf, because in some cases the quality can be very different,” Whitlark says. “It could mean you’re collecting salt somewhere in the irrigation lake, and typically that’s what happens.”
Because irrigation is considered a non-potable use of water, it can have a certain level of bacteria in it, so when taking a sample you don’t need to use a sterile container, according to Bowman. A lab will test it for the constituents that could make a difference in turf health – because there are a lot of constituents that wouldn’t make a difference. Also, the average well or pond wouldn’t need to be tested for bacteria, but a lab would want to test effluent water for it.
Once the results are in, you can do your homework and interpret them yourself and or have someone else do it.
“It depends on how much time you have to educate yourself,” Bowman says. “There are many good resources available via the Web. Extension services and universities have publications on interpreting water quality data. If you don’t want to do it yourself, then consultation is something you should consider.” GCI
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Jason Stahl is a Cleveland-based writer and frequent GCI contributor.