By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer
Scott Seroka, a reporter with KARE-11 News, the Twin Cities' NBC affiliate, was here at the NSC yesterday doing a story on how the NSC's turf-maintenance department is dealing with this year's draught in Central Minnesota. If you don't live in the Twin Cities, you'll need to know that we are nearly six inches below normal for rainfall this year. Last year at this time, we were about ten inches above normal, so that's a big swing.
Neil Ladd, the NSC's Director of Turf, and Curt Conkright, our Turf Superintendent, appear in the story.
The segment ran during the evening news on June 24, but you can watch the segment online by clicking here. Below: the sprinklers on the Victory Links 18th fairway show their stuff on the KARE-11 report.
When Scott originally called me to say they wanted to do that story, I initially thought, boring story! But the finished piece came out pretty good, and when Neil got on camera, he came up with some pretty interesting facts about the NSC's irrigation system. Here's just a sampling:
The NSC has over 75 miles of irrigation pipe underground.
There are about 2,000 sprinkler heads on the campus, split about 50/50 between Victory Links golf course and our athletic fields.
At peak flow, we can put 750,000 gallons of water onto our golf course in a single night. (We always water at night to reduce evaporation.)
Our irrigation system is computer controlled, and we only water when we need to. If there's sufficient rainfall on a given day, the system won't waste water.
Our irrigation system is self-contained. We draw all the water we need from three retention ponds on the campus, that are all linked by ditches and channels. The ponds are filled by rainwater, water run-off from neighboring areas and run-off from the water we use for irrigation. No city water is used for irrigation. As Neil says, "We're off the grid."
The NSC takes a lot of pride in running an environmentally friendly turf-maintanance department. Whether it's water conservation or the responsible application of chemicals, it's a mission we take really seriously.
And in case you're worried, we expect all of our soccer fields will be nice and green for the opening day of Schwan's USA CUP on July 17.
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