Golf club uses innovative reservoir

WELWYN Garden City Golf Club has come up with a new idea to tackle the extreme weather conditions the course has faced in Hertfordshire.

The club, in Mannicotts, High Oaks Road, will install a reservoir to protect themselves from the dry weather between the months of April and October.

The cost of irrigation systems are too high for many golf clubs while the restriction on how much water they can extract from bore holes is limited when the water drops to a certain level.

Chairman Roy Warman said: “Welwyn Garden City Golf Club currently has a licence that allows us to extract water from a bore hole during the months of April and October.

“That enables us to keep the course in good condition during periods of normal weather but the licence also bans us from extracting once the water drops to a certain level meaning we have to switch to using expensive mains water.

“That is bad enough, but our problems get even worse when the water authorities impose a hosepipe ban. Then we have no access to water and are totally reliant on regular rainfall to keep our grass alive. In that scenario we are quite literally in the lap of the gods.

“Clearly that is completely unacceptable for a business which employs 10 full-time staff and has a turnover of over £1million a year, so in order to protect ourselves we started to look at alternative ways of collecting and storing water, and after much discussion decided building a reservoir and harvesting facility was the best solution.”

Members voted overwhelming in favour of the project after planning permission was granted last year.