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Lenexa’s BBQ Battle scars: How smart irrigation is keeping the grass greener in the City of Festivals
Barbecue is a big deal in the City of Lenexa, Kansas. Every year, the great and good from the world of smoked meats and sauces gather to take part in the Great Lenexa BBQ Battle – the official Kansas State BBQ Championship.
The Great Lenexa BBQ Battle has a history spanning more than four decades. It all began way back in 1982, when 12 contestants cooked for 12 discerning judges. By 1984, the competition had been anointed by Governor John Carlin as the official State Championship.
Prizes and ribbons are awarded to the top 10 contestants in seven categories (brisket, pork, pork ribs, chicken, sausage, beef steak and miscellaneous) and the top three overall winners. The big prize is the title of Grand Champion of the Great Lenexa BBQ Battle – The Kansas State Championship.
In 2023, the competition attracted more than 180 teams, who gathered in Sar-Ko-Par Trails Park for the two day event in June. BBQ enthusiasts of all ages flocked to the park, as they do every year, to take in the sights and smells and sample the delicious wares on offer. It’s a genuine cultural phenomenon that draws visitors from all around Kansas and even other states.
But the Great Lenexa BBQ Battle is not the only major event happening in town. In fact, there are so many public events that take place in Lenexa that it sometimes gets called the City of Festivals. These include the Lenexa Art Fair, the Lenexa Freedom Run and Community Days Parade, the Lenexa Spinach Festival and the Lenexa Chili Challenge, as well as a host of sporting, concert, craft and holiday-themed celebrations and activities.
Being a festive city is a source of pride for Lenexa. But the regularity of those events brings with it an added pressure: ensuring the locations where they are held are maintained to the highest standards, despite the heavy visitor traffic and footfall.
That’s especially true for the outdoor events, such as those held in Sar-Ko-Par Trails Park. Hundreds of vehicles and thousands of pairs of feet can create a lot of wear on grassed areas, particularly if there’s any rain around. When you factor in the size of the trailers and trucks used by the BBQ Battle teams, that’s some pretty significant potential turf damage.
So how do you ensure the grass has a chance to recover in time for the City of Festivals’ next big outdoor event?
That was the question facing the City of Lenexa’s Parks & Recreation Department Turf Supervisor, John Giambalvo.
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Lenexa is a bustling city of more than 50,000 residents, lying within the Kansas City metropolitan area. Legendary gunfighter Wild Bill Hickock is said to have staked a claim of 160 acres in the Lenexa area before the municipality was established.
It’s now home to 48 parks, miles of green medians, and acres of public buildings grounds and gardens. John Giambalvo’s job is to keep all of those spaces green and usable. He’s been the City’s Turf Supervisor since 2012, after working with the City of Lenexa as an irrigation technician between 1995 and then.
“We irrigate those 125 acres of medians and public buildings lawns and gardens,” Giambalvo says. “I have an irrigation technician, Rafael Ramirez, who is responsible for the programming of our smart irrigation controllers, over half of which are from Calsense. He works with a contractor to maintain the irrigation system, ensuring any detected leaks or damage are repaired and the whole system is in good running condition.”
Calsense smart irrigation controllers adjust watering schedules based on weather data and the needs of the plants and grasses being irrigated. They also provide real-time alerts to Ramirez, alerting him to any unusual water flow issues, which are an indication that further investigation and maintenance are required.
As Turf Supervisor, Giambalvo oversees that irrigation work along with all the other turf maintenance responsibilities: mowing, fertilizing, reseeding, sodding, erosion control and more. He has a crew of 10, including a crew leader, technicians for irrigation and fertilizing, and a mow crew. Grass seeding is done in-house, and they also engage in some aesthetic maintenance work; installing bluestem prairie grass to further beautify a hillside, for example.
Mowing of the grass and lawns throughout Lenexa is itself a huge undertaking. There’s one seasonal worker on the crew who just mows the taller grass up against roadways, every single day for eight months of the year, in a five or six week rotation.
Giambalvo is a local, or near enough to it, and landed a job in the turf and landscape business just over the state line in Missouri in the late 1980s.
“I’d been searching for what I wanted to do with my career, and just kind of fell into turf and landscape,” Giambalvo says. “And it turned out I really enjoyed it. I looked forward to going to work and accomplishing those landscape projects. Maybe it sounds silly, but I really liked making the grass green.”
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When Giambalvo started working for the Parks and Recreation Department, the City irrigated about 50 acres of land. That area expanded significantly in the early 2000s, as the City implemented plans to better connect communities with roadways, such as Prairie Star Parkway.
“That’s a little over six miles long, and in some places the medians are over 45 feet wide,” Giambalvo says. “We made the decision to irrigate those medians, and that immediately doubled our irrigation requirement. On Prairie Star Parkway alone, for instance, there are 48 acres of irrigated land. All that means we’re now using 42 controllers across the City, 25 of which are from Calsense.
“That number’s always on the increase, because there are a lot of developing areas in the City. We’ll probably see another three Calsense controllers added in the next 18 months, at a reconstructed outdoor pool, the new Justice Center, and for more medians.”
Giambalvo says there are significant time and labor-saving advantages to using Calsense controllers.
“From an irrigation technician perspective, Rafael no longer has to get in his truck and go from controller to controller to check that they are all working as they should be,” he says. “Instead, he now comes in each morning, brings up the Calsense Command Center software, and is told immediately if there’s an issue with a specific irrigation zone. He can go directly to the source of the leak or the break and fix it in a fraction of the time that he would have otherwise. It’s saving time and it’s saving labor.
“Another thing that helps are the flow sensors connected to the controller, and the information they provide, alongside the weather station and the rain buckets we use to monitor precipitation. All of that information helps us to ensure the plants get the right amount of water for them to grow healthily.”
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There’s also a lot of cross-department communication and collaboration involved in keeping Lenexa as green and beautiful as it can be.
“We work closely with the Traffic Department, and with Public Works, for example,” Giambalvo says. “The Traffic Department gets in touch with us before any signs go into the ground on medians, or in parks, or at public buildings, to ensure they’re not going to damage any pipes. Similarly, when there’s any roadwork that might affect the irrigation system, Public Works is in touch with us.
“You can’t avoid the occasional incident, though. When I was the irrigation tech here, every now and then a post would get accidentally driven through a pipe. That could mean losing thousands of gallons of water, because if it wasn’t noticed right away you might be relying on a passerby or residents to call the City and inform us of the leak.
“But today, if that happens, the smart irrigation system notices and sends us an automated alert to say there’s not meant to be water running through there at this time. Rafael can be updated 24 hours a day.”
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Let’s look again at that Great Lenexa BBQ Battle and its aftermath, from Giambalvo’s perspective.
“Imagine 100 contestants pulling into a grassy area, which is not quite level, surrounded by trees,” he says. “They’ve got big trucks, which are pulling giant barbecue trailers behind them. They set up in their spots. And then you get a weekend of rain.
“When it’s time to clean up, there’s more focus on the speed and efficiency of departure than the state of the grass they’ve been driving on.
“The result is that my crew spends several weeks in these areas, rehabbing them, renovating them and trying to get them to grow. Because the barbecue contest is in the last week of June, it’s incredibly difficult to get the affected area back to normal in time for the next event, typically held in the first week of September.
“A lot of times, I wouldn’t have green grass there throughout the summer because I couldn’t get enough water on it.”
After this occurred repeatedly over the years, Giambalvo and his team decided they’d had enough. So one winter they installed irrigation in the event areas; six or seven zones, all managed using Calsense controllers.
This was a big deal, because previously the parks in Lenexa hadn’t been irrigated. This way though, the turf supervision team could control precisely how much water the affected areas receive, ensuring their watering schedule is precisely optimized for regrowth throughout those summer months.
It has made an enormous difference.
“It’s been huge,” Giambalvo says. “Having irrigation right at your fingertips means those areas can recover in plenty of time for September. We can make sure we’re not over- or under-watering, factoring in rainfall and general park usage, allowing us to be precise with the water that the grass needs to really encourage its growth. What previously required many hours and much attention has become a much more straightforward and efficient process.”
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Giambalvo has had a long career with the City of Lenexa, approaching three decades, so he’s got a good handle on the things he finds challenging and satisfying about his job.
“The most challenging thing is keeping good workers happy and enjoying what they’re doing,” he says. “But when that comes together, and you see that people are happy to work here, that’s extremely satisfying. When people are happy, they come to work on time, they’re productive, and more gets done. Being smart about ensuring their time isn’t wasted; that’s a big contributing factor.”
The other big satisfaction Giambalvo gets from his job is linked intrinsically with the feeling he had all those years ago; taking his first steps in the world of the turf and landscaping business, when he realized he loved making the grass green.
“When I drive through the City of Lenexa, I can tell when I’ve crossed the border from another city, because we put a lot of work into maintaining our medians,” he says. “You see the greenest grass when you cross into Lenexa. The difference is that we irrigate our medians, and you can tell where the border is immediately. It’s a different feeling, to be driving and get to the City I work in and see that, and think, ‘Wow!’ This Parks Department goes above and beyond. To me, that’s satisfying.”
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