Testing the environmental flow allocation requirements in Colombia through the HeCCA 1.0 tool

In Colombia around 70% of the electricity generation is from hydropower. It is documented that their infrastructure and operation rules affect the natural regime of flows and sediments with several impacts on aquatic ecosystem functioning mainly on the Magdalena-Cauca river basin, where most of the projects are located. Also, social conflicts have been documented downstream hydropower projects due to water use incompatibilities. Considering that Colombia has a great potential to expand hydropower generation as well as there is a growing demand from other water users, it is necessary to attend the ecological requirements of aquatic ecosystems and to improve the water management in order to avoid irreversible environmental impacts and governance problems.

In 2018, the Colombian Ministry of Environmental and Sustainable Development (MADS) developed a methodology to consider environmental flows both in the water management decisions and in the environmental impact assessment of new projects with impacts on hydrologic regimen. The opportunity to carry out a validation of its premises aims to research its effectiveness in terms of reduction in hydrologic alterations when environmental flow allocation is decided. 

That is why we have developed a computer model (HeCCA 1.0) which contains the most important methods contemplated in the methodology proposed by MADS. Thus, using river discharge data of 15 different river systems located throughout the entire country, the methodology mentioned has been tested in basins with low anthropic alteration of the hydrological regime. In this test, we cover a range of drainage areas, from 180 to 73000 km², located between 25 and 2993 meters above sea level, and different climatic and geomorphological characteristics. 

The following results have been obtained using the HeCCA tool. For the 15 river systems, the statistical quartiles Q1, Q2 and Q3 for the percentage of use are monthly correspond to 24%, 47% and 100% respectively. The systems belong to different seasonal behaviors depending on the geographical location; nine of them count on a monomodal regimen, which average percentage of use is 61%±8, and the highest percentages of use (located in the Pacific basin) are not found during the wettest months, (77%±29); four of the watersheds are in the Orinoco basin, providing use of water between 61% and 67%. Six systems have bimodal regimen, whose average percentage of use is 49%±32, the two lowest percentages of use (14% and 19%) are found in the biggest bimodal watersheds, with sizes over 1700km², which also have the highest average yields. The highest percentage of use found during the wettest months of the year is 99%, corresponding to the system located at one of the lowest points of the Caribbean basin.  

Thus, the percentage of available water depends on the watershed size, if it is related to the runoff seasonality along the year in the different catchment areas of the country. This approach provides stakeholders a clear overview of the water availability and management through a useful tool which improves the integral water management for hydrological systems.