Osprey Water Management News: 14th August 2006
Taken from Birmingham Post (Business In Sport)
Osprey Becomes a 'Top-Five' Player
A Shropshire-based company has become a 'top-five' player within the highly competitive irrigation industry providing solutions to a range of leisure, commercial and sporting industries. It has also become market leader in both water management and water recycling activities.
In this article Jon Jinks, managing director of Osprey Water Management in Wem, takes a look at water conservation issues, which are clearly impacting on certain sections of the sporting sector.
As a company a large slice of our income comes from the sporting arena and in particular updating irrigation systems for many older established golf courses.
Managers of both private and municipal golf courses are increasingly looking to water recycling and more efficient water management policies. This is hardly surprising when you consider that a typical course irrigation system has thousands of metres of underground pipework and poor or aged jointing will result in costly underground leaks.
However, a properly designed and installed course management system could half the water usage compared to an archaic one. Today, courses should be self sustaining when it comes to water usage. Generally, this is achieved by drilling bore holes in the ground and utilising water from there. However, this could end up being a short term fix, with The Environment Agency now being reluctant to renew abstraction licences in some areas.
As a company we have been commissioned by some of the leading private golf clubs in the country including Royal St Davids and Royal Porthcawl to update their irrigation systems in order to conserve water and radically improve efficiency in keeping fairways and greens in first class condition. More locally we have been involved with many clubs including Shrewsbury and Wrekin.
As well as our strong links with the golfing sector, we maintain football pitches for numerous clubs including Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Derby County, Mansfield Town, Walsall and West Bromwich Albion.
One of our most recent contracts was awarded by leading motorsport and automotive technology specialists Prodrive Ltd and involved the installation of a watering system for a wet handling skid pan. Prodrive is responsible for the design and development of road cars and the running of teams in Formula One, World Rally Championships and Le Mans.
There is no disputing that the overall water infrastructure throughout the UK is in a very poor state of repair with as much as a third of our domestic water leaking out of old delivery pipes.
Water conservation polices vary from council to council and one of the most forward thinking is Birmingham City Council, which takes a pro-active approach to water management. Such a stance is clearly a sensible policy as the actions of councils tend to be examined under the public microscope far more than that of private clients.
An example of this policy can be seen with regard to many of the municipal golf courses that it is responsible for. We have recently been commissioned to replace fixed speed water pumping stations at numerous courses and install state-of-the-art variable speed pumping stations. These deliver water as and when required, saving considerable amounts of both water and electricity in the process - energy savings over a three year period usually cover the cost of the equipment!
It has become very apparent over the past two to three years that the supply of water for both domestic and commercial applications is becoming increasingly a major concern. The long-term solution to the provision of sustainable water for irrigation and other non-drinking purposes lies with the harvesting of Grey Water.
Grey water harvesting is widely used in the United States and in Africa. There is no doubt that if the UK widely implemented such a policy there would not be a water shortage in the south east. Simply measures such as harvesting rainwater dripping from roofs into butts, through to catching drain water from sports arenas for recycling would make a significant difference. However, initially, there would need to be an investment in treatment equipment and winter storage facilities.
The only way that this can be sensibly tackled is through a combination of government legislation and an education programme designed to make people aware of the issues.