July 2013 - Parks & Recreation - 58

Operations
Water Sense

Water-efficiency innovations take hold in municipal turfgrass management
By Amy Kapp

ith an average rainfall of 12 inches per year, one might say that necessity is the mother of invention - or at least innovation - when it
comes to turfgrass irrigation in Boise, Idaho. The park and recreation
department has been progressive with water conservation in the past 20 years,
and its broad use of related technologies, plants and equipment has yielded results, including a 20 percent reduction in water use between 2009 and 2011.
" It's a different game for us in the
West, " says Park Superintendent
Tom Governale. " Water conservation is water conservation....there
are good practices [everyone should
follow]. But in this part of the world,
we have to be more aggressive. "

Stone Mountain Golf Club by Marriott

Using Technology
When speaking of computerized
systems, Governale notes his department's success over the years with

weather-station-based irrigation controls, which have decreased water
use across Boise's 1,000 acres of turf
by gauging weather conditions, or
" evapotranspiration rates " (the loss
of water from soil by evaporation and
plant transpiration), and adjusting
irrigation schedules. However, Governale says that his department has
recently begun to experiment with
soil moisture sensors, a relatively new
smart technology that he believes will

Converting high-maintenance turf areas to native grasses and wildflowers can reduce
water use, prevent erosion, improve water quality and provide valuable habitats.

Parks & Recreation

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greatly enhance, and possibly drive,
water savings in the future.
" The beauty of soil sensors is that
they are site specific, " Governale
affirms. " [With weather-based controls], you'll have one or just a few
centralized weather stations using
the science and data they collect to
set off the irrigation stations in all or
many of your park sites. "
He continues, " We have a 40-acre
site where we've installed 13 or 14 soil
sensors connected to two or three individual irrigation stations each. Those
sensors are specific to those stations
and those particular areas of the soil.
That's where you really start saving
water, and that's being waterwise. "
According to Dana Lonn, managing director of The Toro Company's
Center for Advanced Turf Technology, the precision made possible by soil
sensors makes them both a potentially major incoming trend in turfgrass
irrigation - and a necessary one. He
draws a modern-day comparison to
their usefulness.
" If you are going to control the
temperature in a room, how do you
do it? " he asks. " Our grandparents
would put wood or coal in a stove. But
now we have thermostats, which are
sensors that measure the temperature.
And the only way to get really precise
about things is to measure them. "
Lonn says a fundamental flaw with
weather-based controls is that they
don't take into account how effectively rain soaks into soil. He mentions
research he's seen in which recorded water use for a tall fescue grass

July 2013 - Parks & Recreation

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