Harding Park switches to recycled water

Last week California gave final approval for TPC Harding Park to use recycled water on the greens instead of potable water.

Potable water refers to the stuff we drink and cook with, meaning perfectly clean water has been used all this time in making The City’s crown-jewel public golf course stay green.

Plans to make The City’s golf courses more environmentally-friendly started in 2003 when the North San Mateo County Sanitation District built a new facility to produce recycled water.

Until now, though, the facility provided water only to irrigate the Olympic, San Francisco, and Lake Merced golf courses — all extremely expensive and exclusive private golf clubs.

Adding the 175-acre Harding Park course to that list isn’t a problem because, currently, the facility produces upwards of 2.8 million gallons of recycled water daily, but customers use less than 1 million gallons of it.

Additionally, the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board built an underground storage tank at the course that can hold up to 700,000 gallons of recycled water. The project also included installing approximately 4,800 feet of pipeline along Lake Merced Boulevard.

Prior to Harding Park’s approval to use recycled water, the course used water from the Hetch Hetchy system.

SFPUC spokesman Tyrone Jue told SF Examiner of the Harding Park project:

“It is the first in a long line of recycled water projects in The City.”