The Open Banc Sabadell-Trofeo Conde de Godó: A Sustainable Tennis Tournament in Barcelona

With Barcelona in a state of emergency due to lack of water, which has come to limit the irrigation of gardens, the regulation of use in homes and the impossibility of filling private swimming pools, eyes are also pointing to those sports where the liquid element is essential, as happens in golf or tennis. Particularly if the latter sport is played on clay. As the Open Banc Sabadell-Trofeo Conde de Godó that will begin on April 13 at the centenary Real Club Tenis de Barcelona (RCTB).

The tournament will inaugurate the new project of reuse of gray water and stormwater from the club, whose investment has been one million euros, and which allows all the water used to irrigate the slopes to come from tanks that are responsible for storing, filtering, purifying and treating with chlorine the water coming from the showers and of rain. Yeah, The same water that Rafa Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz will use to shower after the matches will be used to, treated and after that laborious process, water the courts. in which the champions trophy will be played.

“We are visionaries in this regard. This type of reuse already exists, but we have seen it for a long time. The savings in well water consumption is total. We have a volume of people who use the water and return to the land. It is purified and returns to the earth. And return to the well. We turn gray water into green water”explains Pablo Azevedo, Operational Director of the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona.

A SWOT, the figure of Jordi Cambra and the push of Agbar

We have to go back to 2008, in the previous drought that Barcelona suffered (“there were even scheduled cuts,” Acevedo recalls), to put the project’s starting point. The board of directors at that time prepared a SWOT in which one of the biggest threats in the future was the lack of waterso work began on an innovative idea that could see shape in the future and solve this problem.

Although at the beginning new, more superficial sustainability ideas were projected, with the arrival of Jordi Cambra’s board of directors in 2018, this challenge was taken seriously. And they went through many phases until they found the most economically acceptable key. “The first idea was to analyze if we could use underground irrigation, we wanted to take a sample track in Llafranch. This is done through an underground membrane that measured relative humidity and sweated as needed. When we did the numbers, it was crazy. We also looked at a cistern (reservoir) under each runway, but it was also a high cost“says Acevedo.

After the progress with Aguas de Valencia, the arrival of Agbar as a sponsor two years ago was the definitive impulse and the idea: the reuse of water. Three 75 cubic meter water tanks were installed under the terrace of runway 1. The project ended in November 2023 and was led by ACO and CENPAS engineering. Acevedo explains the beginning of the process: “TIt all starts in the showers. We separate shower and river water from faecal water and water from the hairdressing salon.. These could even be drinkable, but the legislation does not allow it now.”

The water from showers and rain passes the first filter: “They go to a tank where solids such as hair, grease… are eliminated. It is then pumped to a treatment plant, where the cleaning process is carried out, and then it ends up in the chlorine deposits.“. This is where, in addition, you have to be careful to balance the chlorine parameters. If it falls short, legionella could be produced, while if it falls too long it would not be beneficial for the irrigation of the RCTB gardens. They control everything through an application of mobile.

The balance of chlorine and the heritage of the Can Canet well

To add historical overtones, within the facilities there is a well, which has been cleaned and supplies the club: “It was abandoned, there was even a bicycle inside. We did a cleanup at a cost of about 90,000 euros. It belonged to the Masia de Can Canet, which is what there was before the club’s expansion. It is a natural good. It is rare that it exists, but a stream passes through this area and the correct levels are maintained.”

In the absence of the final seal to legalize it, The RCTB has this inheritance when acquiring these lands in 1951. Just at the gates of the first edition of a Conde Godó tournament that leads sustainability and whose waters are already part of an inexhaustible circuit.

2024-03-30 17:16:42
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