Project Investigator: Nick Sepulveda Project Summary and Work Plan Metadata Publications

Summary

The objective of this study was to assess the potential effects of injecting and then withdrawing 0.5 bgd of water into the Upper Floridan aquifer from 100 wells along the northern half of Lake Okeechobee on the potentiometric surfaces of the Floridan aquifer system north of the Lake.

CERP's Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) Project proposes to inject and then withdraw up to 1.0 billion gallons per day (bgd) of surface water into and out of the Upper Floridan aquifer (UFA) during wet and dry weather conditions at selected sites near Lake Okeechobee (LO). An existing ground- water flow model (Sepulveda, 2002) was used to assess the impact of injections and withdrawals of 0.5 bgd into and from the UFA distributed among 100 wells along the northern half of LO. Half the rate proposed was simulated because only half of LO could be simulated in the existing model. Steady-state head buildups and drawdowns in the UFA and Lower Floridan aquifer (LFA), caused by the injections and withdrawals into the UFA, relative to the 1993-94 hydrologic conditions, were simulated using both, specified-head and specified-flux boundary conditions, along the lateral boundaries of the UFA. These two conditions were simulated to bracket the effects of these injections or withdrawals on the UFA and LFA. Due to the proximity of the injection/withdrawal wells along the perimeter of LO to the southern boundary of the existing model, the resulting potentiometric surfaces can only be used as a very rough approximation of the true effects on the UFA and LFA.

Project Summary

• 2003