Environmental impact assessment of hydroelectric project 'Santuario 20' located in Sumapaz river basin

摘要

The Hydroelectric Project Santuario 20 is located between the towns of Icononzo and Pandi, in the departments of Tolima and Cundinamarca respectively. The project consists to get water of the Sumapaz river, which will be transported through a tunnel driving on a stretch of about 6.4 Km, its returned back into the river at a point downstream. At the last section of tunnel it will install the pressure line and then roundhouse, where power generation infrastructure will be available. Since 2008, the company EMGESA SA E.S.P. has applied to the Ministry of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development initiate the administrative procedure of environmental permit since the magnitude of the project is large scale; for this, the company EMGESA has made the past year socialization of the project to the community. However in the population and the mayors of these municipalities, is not clear the environmental involvement and the real benefits that this work will bring to people living in these municipalities, considering that the energy produced in the hydraulic unit will not be used in this region, this energy will be exported. In order to issue, a technical concept from the environmental point of view without conflict of interest is necessary, in this research was done the Environmental Impact Assessment of the area of influence of the project. We were used qualitative tools such as surveys and quantitative tools such as the matrix index of environmental significance, in which it was observed that affected components in the construction, commissioning and maintenance of the project and with very high environmental importance were: wildlife, hydrology and socio-economic component.