A hundred tonnes of wet, heavy silt had to be shovelled and barrowed off the Wakefield Bowling Club’s artificial turf after last year’s floods, and finally bowlers are back on the green.
Don Lindsay says numerous groups have been involved in the cleanup under the Wanderers Community Sport Club umbrella, with volunteers shovelling the wet silt into wheelbarrows and dumping it outside the bowling club.
He remembers turning up at the bowling club after two floods left the artificial green covered with thick silt from the nearby Wai iti River.
“I thought, oh bugger. There was nothing we could do and luckily people just turned up and gave us a hand.”
The club has two greens - a natural turf green in front of the clubrooms that was not flooded, and a lower-level artificial green that was covered by floodwaters. Insurance enabled groups to use the cleanup as fundraisers.
Don says the silt would have turned hard as concrete once it dried out, so the club kept it watered until the groups could spend a day digging it out.
“They came and did a marvellous job. We had over 100 people working on it during the day. It was wet, so it was heavy!”
Once the silt was removed, the Wakefield Volunteer Fire Brigade washed the artificial green, which had remained intact beneath the silt, albeit with a few bumps that needed flattening.
When a local farmer saw the silt piled up outside the bowling club and asked if it could be taken for use on their land, it solved the problem of disposing of the pile.
Now the club has its artificial bowling green back just in time for winter, when the natural turf becomes too soft for play.
