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LEADERBRAND AND POVERTY BAY GOLF CLUB TEE-UP A NOVEL WAY TO HELP CONSERVE WATER

Good old Kiwi ingenuity strikes again as LeaderBrand has come up with an innovative new way to conserve water from their processing salad house.

In a win-win arrangement, LeaderBrand Produce is repurposing its salad house wash water away from the Gisborne City water system and piping it under Lytton Road into the number 10 green to help the Poverty Bay Golf Club increase the amount of irrigation water it has available for its course.  

Poverty Bay Golf Club spokesperson, Rowan Clark, says that previously the golf course was using water from the Te Hapara Sands aquifer to irrigate the greens.   

“Reductions in the allocation of water from the aquifer has meant that the golf course was facing a water shortfall as it sought to renew its resource consent in 2022,” he said.  

 “The golf course is situated on light soils and our region can experience dry periods so reliable supply of irrigation water is critical to keeping our greens, tees, and fairways in good playing condition.  This will be an increasing concern with dry weather events occur more frequently in this region.” 

The Gisborne District Council has recently granted resource consent for LeaderBrand to discharge up to 675 cubic metres per day of water into the lined pond that feeds the golf course’s irrigation system. 

Richard McPhail, LeaderBrand’s CEO, says that as a significant user of water for farm irrigation and processing, LeaderBrand is very conscious of the need for the region to make the most of its water resources.   

“For the last few years, we have been looking at new ways we could re-use our processed water from our salad house. Over the summer we use the wash water to transport our squash from the fields into our packhouse.  This has enabled us to reduce our site’s water use during the squash season and another bonus is that there is sufficient residual sanitiser to allow us to stop using chlorine in the squash packhouse as well,” he said. 

“The new arrangement with the golf club is great for all parties and will help us further reduce the volume of water we send to the city wastewater plant and will solve the groundwater shortage problem for the golf course while reducing demand on the Te Hapara Sands aquifer.”  

The water that is being discharged to the golf course irrigation pond is extremely high quality as it is essentially city drinking water.   

The arrangement has required some investment from all parties to introduce monitoring and control equipment, water meters, telemetry, and a 600-metre pipeline from the LeaderBrand site to the golf course irrigation pond.   

“We are extremely grateful to everyone involved in making this project a huge success. Everyone has invested a considerable amount of time. We’d like to also extend thanks to the Gisborne District Council and Poverty Bay Golf Club personnel to produce a great working system that has found benefits for all parties,” says Richard McPhail.