‘Pitch’ing for smart water management

Article posted by Coliseum, September 9^th, 2024

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With global warming staring us in the face and water scarcity becoming a concern the world over, Lee Collier and Phil Williams both strongly feels that efficient water management is not just a choice but a necessity.

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Both are experts on pitch-related matters and are well aware of the fact that with water stress on rise around the world the football pitches are under threat and assert that a lot of behind-the-scenes efforts go in maintaining a playing surface and keeping the pristine sheen intact.

Tomasz Zahorski is well-versed on the topic of sustainability and is a Member of the Sustainability Working Group of the European Club Association. He is a Member of the Management Boards and Supervisory Boards in a number of sports, entertainment and real estate entities and is also a Board Member of the top-flight professional football club of Poland, Legia Warsaw.

Lee Collier is one of the most experienced sports surface design consultants in the industry and leads the technical delivery team of STRI’s (a company which deals with sports surfaces) major stadium and training venue pitch design projects across the globe.

Phil Williams heads the STRI Group’s environmental services company EPG. He works with the wider team at the STRI Group on water management in relation to sports surface design.

Lee Collier, Technical Director, STRI, UK, and Phil Williams, Director, EPG, an STRI Group company, UK, tells Tomasz Zahorski, Board Member, Legia Warsaw, Poland, that going by the vicious circle of global climate change the stadia will have to be so designed so that it keeps provision for attenuation tanks which can store excess rainwater so that it helps in watering the pitch when drought-like conditions persist. Zahorski finds out more from the duo in an exclusive for ‘Coliseum’.

STRI

West Yorkshire (UK)-based the STRI Group is a leading global design, engineering and management consultancy. It plans, designs and builds sustainable places and spaces for the people to enjoy. The company’s skills were founded within the design, management and maintenance of sports surfaces and they continue to deliver and implement strategies for the sports facilities and their surrounding infrastructure as well as working within residential, corporate and commercial spaces.

Tomasz Zahorski stated that intelligent water management is a big task in hand for all the clubs as well as the venue operators/owners. He asked how stadia are going forward on this to which Phil Williams replied that the venues will have to know the art of smart water management – “Winters will be wetter and Summers will be dry and this will further get amplified. Due to global warming, it rains with more intensity nowadays. And this is where the venues will have to act fast to manage the rainwater by setting up huge attenuation tanks. The new stadia build will have to be in such a manner that the pipes are significantly bigger and help in rainwater storage.”

Zahorski wanted to know more about the future of water management and Lee Collier opined, “The stadium design part will have to be revisited and the space for water storage tanks which is incredibly limited will have to be looked into. In most stadium pitches we have potentially a void that we can create beneath pitches which could be a really good solution to the attenuation requirement going forward.”

Williams added that “venues could combine attenuation storage and rainwater harvesting system so during drought they can stop worrying about watering the pitch.”

Wrap-up

Phil Williams underlined that to maintain the pristine conditions of the pitch, the venue operators/owners will have to aggressively take up the sustainability approach as well as the water management part at the “master planning stage and one cannot follow the same principle that one has followed for the past 50 years because when it goes to the planners it will get rejected outright. Considering everything at the master planning stage will even be wallet-friendly.”

Lee Collier couldn’t agree more and summed up by stating, “The venue operators will have to be innovative and adopt the passive irrigation system which can reduce water consumption.”

The duo told Tomasz Zahorski that by adopting comprehensive solutions the venue operators can enhance water efficiency while maintaining the health and aesthetic appeal of the pitch. One will have to adopt strategies to achieve optimal water efficiency without compromising on the quality of the playing surface. Maintaining a healthy turf with minimal water usage requires careful balance.

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