WESTLOCK – Despite the recent heat wave and being cut-off from the Town of Westlock’s raw water supply for irrigation, the Westlock Golf Club is in good shape as the greens remain healthy and are “the best they’ve been in years.”
And although the fairways are playing hard and fast with some brown and patchy spots, the temperature swing back to the low-to-mid 20s, combined with the recent cloud/smoke cover that’s brought high humidity along with rain over night July 21 has head pro Shawn Fagan optimistic as they enter their busiest time of the year.
“It’s good out there. The greens are healthy, the tee boxes are healthy. The green are in the best conditions they’ve been in four or five years out,” said Fagan July 20. “We had the men’s amateur qualifier out here and we got good reviews back. The course is playing tough — the low scores were 71, while at some of the other courses they were shooting 65, 67.”
“Considering the weather that we had in June, the conditions are super,” added past president and club member Jim Lawrence.
Westlock is not alone as many other northern Alberta course “are facing these exact same conditions” said Fagan. To keep the greens irrigated until they regain access to the town hydrant that taps into the raw water intake from the Pembina River, they’re drawing water from their onsite reservoirs. More rain, like the showers last week, will also help the course, both men added.
“The fairways aren’t dead, they’re just hard. Every course is dealing with this,” said Fagan.
“The tee boxes and greens are the No. 1 priority. Probably the brownest part of the course is the driving range and that’s because we cut it down the week we got the hot spell.”
“The greens are the priority for the water and there should be enough for that three weeks to a month,” added Lawrence.
At the July 12 Town of Westlock council meeting, operations director Robin Benoit said that the current average daily water consumption figure is around 3,150 cubic metres, which is close to 40 per cent higher than the 1,700 cubic metres used daily over the winter months.
Although in past years during similar dry spells the Town of Westlock has implemented water bans and restrictions, CAO Simone Wiley said they have no plans to impose one in 2021 unless usage spikes even further.
“We have a very well-designed system with lots of available capacity. Our raw water reservoir has about 230 days of storage that is used to settle the turbidity to keep our operating costs low. Our current daily average would have to double before we would need to consider water rationing,” Wiley wrote in an e-mail, noting they also fill up the raw storage facility in the winter to get a head start when demand increases.
