How environmental water efficiency Stax up for the Hyatt Regency Coolum
When your golf course is an international showpiece for the hospitality, sporting and property industries, top levels of environmental responsibility come with the territory.
But what has been particularly pleasing for the Hyatt Regency Coolum Golf Resort and Spa – venue of the Australian PGA – is how straightforward it has been to achieve world standards of treatment of washwater used on its extensive fleet of maintenance vehicles and machinery.
The issue of what to do with the hundreds of thousands of litres of water a year carrying natural waste, vehicle wash chemicals and fertilizer residue is a serious business on the 150-hectare (370 acre) parklike site. In addition to housing one of Australia’s premier golf courses and premier hotel properties of 300 lowrise suites and villas, the undulating bushland and delicate natural rainforest environment is home to extensive local wildlife. It is also the centerpiece of major ongoing residential development by the hotel’s owners, Lend Lease.
“As a good corporate and local citizen, we have always been highly sensitive to the environmental priorities of local government, regulatory authorities and the broader community,” says the Hyatt Regency Coolum’s Superintendent of Vehicles and Equipment, Mr Lindsay Blanch. “We have made it our business to be a leader from day one, not a follower. We don’t need to be told about blue-green algae and pollution leaching into water supplies and sewers – we have been ahead of environmental issues here since setting up nearly 20 years ago,” said Mr Blanch, a local resident who has worked on the property since it opened.
The Sunshine Coast property this year became one of the first hospitality and golf properties to install WaterStax technology to treat waste water and to enter into an annual maintenance agreement with its distributor, national water technology specialists Enware Australia Pty Ltd.
Waterstax is designed as an economical and environmentally advanced system to treat waste wash water generated in diverse applications, including the washpads of the 2000-plus golf courses in this country, which serve more the 1.3 million players involved in Australia’s number one participant sport.
WaterStax uses bioremediation technology to economically remove oil, grease, hydrocarbons and grass clippings from the thousands of litres of wash water that is typically generated on wash pads every day in the course of cleaning mowers and diverse landscaping equipment employed by hospitality, local government, agricultural and other sectors. Each WaterStax installation can handle up to 1.4 million litres a year (three-stage) or more than 2 million litres (four-stage).
Unlike filtration systems which create a residue that must be disposed of with legally regulated great care, WaterStax installations use a highly effective blend of microbes, Baseline Bugs, that literally consumes and converts wastes to harmless H2O (water) and CO2 (carbon dioxide). The water can then be recycled or discharged either to the sewer or used for irrigation, says Enware Product Development Manager Mr Graeme Hansen.
Baseline Bugs is nontoxic and free of pathogens. It meets all current and proposed EPA regulations for biological treatment and is highly suitable to Australian conditions, says Mr Hansen, who has been involved in the country’s first, highly successful, installations of the technology at golf courses in Victoria and Queensland that are part of a programme of more than 250 WaterStax installations worldwide.
The Hyatt Regency Coolum WaterStax application is the first in Australia to also involve a comprehensive service agreement to optimise the performance of the plant.
“We want to keep it ticking over in the best operating condition possible because the installation is widely used by both our staff and by customers,” said Mr Blanch. “Just recently we had all the people at the BMW Classic use it to clean their vehicles - so there is plenty of demand on it in addition to our machinery. It is working out well – we’re very pleased.”
Previously the property relied upon a three-stage trap to remove solids, oils and some pollutants. While this was state-of-the-art at the time it was installed, the WaterStax technology installed earlier this year is streets ahead in terms of everyday practicality and environmental efficiency.
The modular WaterStax system – with galvanized frame and UV and chemical resistant high density polyethylene tanks – is fed from a half-horsepower submersible sump pump from which accumulated waste is fed through an easily cleaned screen to the series of tanks. As the liquid moves through the series of tanks, air and the Australian-manufactured Baseline Bugs microbe solution is injected to commence the progressive bioremediation and water polishing process. Cleaned waste is safely released to the environment.
“We used to have to call in registered waste disposal people under the old system, which was very expensive because you can’t just dump this type of waste anywhere. With legally prescribed waste disposal, this was a growing problem,” said Mr Blanch. “And sometimes, when the old system got closed up, we’d have to get in and physically dig it out, which was a heavy job. That never happens with the new system.”
Graeme Hansen says WaterStax is engineered to minimize handling, eliminate heavy manual labour, make screening processes easy to clean and ensure staff does not have to touch toxic material.
The system also overcomes major shortcomings of conventional Triple Interception Traps, which cannot handle a lot of grass solids, don’t cope with flooding (when many untreated wastes are released to sewers) and don’t attempt to remove fuel, herbicide and pesticide residues.
“And in addition to doing an outstanding job in an environmental sense, the system is rugged and flexible.
“It has to be, to cope with the everyday workload of a big facility such as the Hyatt Regency, which has scores of daily and weekly cleaning jobs to cope with. If it can cope with that load, it can cope with any golf course.”
Mr Blanch says that not only is the system fully maintained – which is a plus in terms of manpower use, OHS and environmental accountability – but also its uses extend beyond just machinery to vehicles as well – “We use it extensively on our own vehicles and frequently those of our clients.
“Sure you have to train your people to use it the right way - dryblowing out big sticks and clumps of grass from the feed and using appropriate detergents. But training comes with any new technology and environmental awareness is part of our ongoing training brief. We are supported by Enware in this – Graeme is here when needed to advise us, and to point out how to get the best out of our investment, drawing on his experience over a number of sites.
“And the upside of good training is a very clean output and a high level of utilization. There is no heavily polluted or enriched material being released into our very beautiful environment, which is very important both from an ecological and financial viewpoint. Our owners, Lend Lease, are developing a wide range of residential accommodation centered on the property and a good deal of its value centres on its unspoiled beauty. So good environmental sense also makes good commercial sense.”
For more information, please contact Mr Graeme Hansen, Product Development Manager, Enware Australia Pty Ltd, Unit 2, 9 Virginia Street, Virginia, Queensland 4014, ph 07 3865 1033, fax 07 3865 1049, mob 0409 440 209 or Enware Australia Pty Ltd, P.O. Box 2545 Taren Point NSW . 2229 . Australia, ph 1800 671 864 Fax: 02 9295 9536 www.enware.com.au, graemeh@enware.com.au
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