Work on a new US$8.5 million irrigation project at the Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, California.

The project will see the rerouting of Scotts Valley Water District’s treated wastewater to the club. An additional purification process will then take place on-site before the water is on the Pasatiempo course.

A project of this nature has been a discussed and proposed since the 1980s, but was finally given the impetus necessary in 2014 thanks to a combination of a major drought and a mandate from the city of Santa Cruz to reduce the course’s water use by 50 per cent.

An agreement was signed between the club and Scotts Valley earlier this year which will see the club pay Scotts Valley to use the water supply to irrigate the course. 

An early part of the project will see the creation of a 500,000-gallon water holding tank and treatment facility, which will be predominantly subterranean and is expected to be completed by May 2017. 

The 64-acre course requires 300,000 gallons of water every day to maintain, with an anticipated 150,000 to 200,000 gallons coming from reclaimed water once the project is complete.

D. Scott Hoyt, the club’s general manager, told GCA: “What we have accomplished here is not only securing irrigation water for the next 30 years but securing it at a fixed rate. We will be a model for the golf course industry. I am not sure there is any other course that has three sources of irrigation water available to them – recycled, well and potable. Pasatiempo has secured its future and can take irrigation water out of the equation for course conditioning. That is unbelievable in California.”