Perspectivas generales del efecto del reúso de aguas residuales para riego en cultivos para la producción de biocombustibles en Colombia

In last years, the ethanol and biodiesel production in Colombia has increased directly with the oil palm and sugar cane cultures in departments located all over the national territory, generating a higher water demand and, therefore, projecting a threat of this resource availability in the next few year. Due this departments are vulnerable to having low water availability due to prolonged periods of drought, upper watershed deforestation and effect of global climate change, it is necessary to implement strategies to maintain an enough water supply for the population and agriculture needs. Because these crops are not direct human consumption and some of them are destined to the energy sector, a high potential of wastewater reuse for irrigation are contemplating, avoid them dumping in freshwater bodies. This practice has been used in countries as a planning strategy an integrated management of water resources, getting specific and sustainable solutions to long term. This paper made an approach from an environmental, hydro-climatologically and normative perspective for determining the wastewater reuse potential in the irrigation of these cultures in Colombia, which was found viable because climatic conditions, to encourage waste water to be seen as a resource, generate estimated agronomic benefits and enviromental impacts will be controllable if it’s handling environmental management properly