City of Walnut Creek Commissions Variable-Speed Recycled Water Pump Station and 14-Acre Pollinator Habitat at Boundary Oak

Public works engineers with the City of Walnut Creek, recycled-water specialists from the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San), and agronomists at the municipal Boundary Oak Golf Course commissioned a variable-frequency recycled-water booster pump station, subsurface soil-moisture telemetry, and fourteen acres of native monarch pollinator roughs on Sunday afternoon at 3800 Valley Vista Road in eastern Walnut Creek. Nestled in the foothills of Lime Ridge Open Space and Mount Diablo State Park, the 160-acre city-owned course serves both as a regional championship golf venue and as a vital wildlife buffer corridor.

Inside the newly rebuilt stone-faced pump house beside the ninth fairway pond, mechanical contractors replaced three thirty-year-old constant-speed cast-iron pumps with four variable-frequency-drive (VFD) stainless-steel vertical turbine pumps fed by Central San's tertiary-treated recycled water main. Paired with eighty wireless time-domain-reflectometry (TDR) root-zone moisture sensors buried across every green and fairway, the automated controller eliminates wind-drift overspray and reduces annual irrigation volume by 22 million gallons while cutting pump electricity use by 39 percent.

Across fourteen acres of out-of-play hillside slopes bordering Valley Vista Road and the Lime Ridge trailhead, grounds crews removed irrigated turfgrass and established certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary beds of showy milkweed, California golden poppies, silver lupine, and deergrass. The drought-tolerant native meadow provides vital autumn nectar for migrating monarch butterflies and nesting songbirds along the Mount Diablo corridor.

The $640,000 water-and-habitat modernization was funded through the Walnut Creek Golf Enterprise Fund and regional water-efficiency rebates. Course information and public tee times are available on the Boundary Oak Official Website.