Evaluation of Water Consumption at a Golf Club in Colombia for the Formulation of a Program of Savings and Efficient Use of Water by Indexes

摘要

Water management is a tool that seeks to guarantee the sustainability of water through the efficient and effective management of water. This resource has innumerable uses, one of the most prominent of which is recreation. However, the demands of the recreational sector have not been of great relevance for decision makers. Some of these activities, like golf, require an ample infrastructure that demands a lot of water for its operation and maintenance. In this article an evaluation and quantification of the volume of water used in a golf club in the municipality of Tocancipa, Colombia, is carried out. A proposed Program of Savings and Efficient Use of Water (PSEUW) to reduce the impacts generated by this activity as a result of operating actions within the facilities is presented. As a result, the irrigation operation in the golf course represents 98% of the total consumption of the club, that is to say 147,643.70 m~3/year, because the water is used for both the course in use and for the tennis courts, gardens, fertilization and fumigation processes, filling lakes, washing cars, and washing golf carts. On the other hand, there are also large losses of water throughout the facilities, in cases such as the boiler and the hoses used in the irrigation system, as a result of the lack of technification and maintenance. Subsequent to this, the PSEUW approach focused on technical, social, and environmental levels. Finally, it is concluded that the consumption of water in these types of activities must be regulated and technified in order to reduce the volume required, minimizing the environmental, economic, and social impacts that this consumption may represent.