La Ley del Agua de la Florida de 2016 es una política de agua integral que aborda los problemas críticos de abastecimiento de agua y calidad de la Florida. Entró en vigor el 1 de julio de 2016. La Ley del Agua de la Florida de 2016 creó la Ley de Protección de Acuíferos y Manantiales de Florida, codificó la Iniciativa de la Florida Central y revisó la Ley de los Everglades y Estuarios del Norte.

La Ley del Agua de la Florida de 2016 es una política de agua integral que aborda los problemas críticos de abastecimiento de agua y calidad de la Florida. Entró en vigor el 1 de julio de 2016. La Ley del Agua de la Florida de 2016 creó la Ley de Protección de Acuíferos y Manantiales de Florida, codificó la Iniciativa de la Florida Central y revisó la Ley de los Everglades y Estuarios del Norte.

La Ley del Agua de la Florida de 2016 es una política de agua integral que aborda los problemas críticos de abastecimiento de agua y calidad de la Florida. Entró en vigor el 1 de julio de 2016. La Ley del Agua de la Florida de 2016 creó la Ley de Protección de Acuíferos y Manantiales de Florida, codificó la Iniciativa de la Florida Central y revisó la Ley de los Everglades y Estuarios del Norte.

Surface-water/groundwater exchange impacts water quality and budgets. In karst aquifers, these exchanges also play an important role in dissolution. Five years of river discharge data were analyzed and a transient groundwater flow model was developed to evaluate large-scale temporal and spatial variations of exchange between an 80-km stretch of the Suwannee River in north-central Florida (USA) and the karstic upper Floridan aquifer. The one-layer transient groundwater flow model was calibrated using groundwater levels from 59 monitoring wells, and fluxes were compared to the exchange calculated from discharge data. Both the numerical modeling and the discharge analysis suggest that the Suwannee River loses water under both low- and high-stage conditions. River losses appear greatest at the inside of a large meander, and the former river water may continue across the meander within the aquifer rather than return to the river. In addition, the numerical model calibration reveals that aquifer transmissivity is elevated within this large meander, which is consistent with enhanced dissolution due to river losses. The results show the importance of temporal and spatial variations in head gradients to exchange between streams and karst aquifers and dissolution of the aquifers.

Volusia Blue Spring (VBS) is the largest spring along the St. Johns River in Florida (USA) and the spring pool is refuge for hundreds of manatees during winter months. However, the water quality of the spring flow has been degraded due to urbanization in the past few decades. A three-dimensional contaminant fate and transport model, utilizing MODFLOW-2000 and MT3DMS, was developed to simulate boron transport in the Upper Florida Aquifer, which sustains the VBS spring discharge. The VBS model relied on information and data related to natural water features, rainfall, land use, water use, treated wastewater discharge, septic tank effluent flows, and fertilizers as inputs to simulate boron transport. The model was calibrated against field-observed water levels, spring discharge, and analysis of boron in water samples. The calibrated VBS model yielded a root-mean-square-error value of 1.8 m for the head and 17.7 μg/L for boron concentrations within the springshed. Model results show that anthropogenic boron from surrounding urbanized areas contributes to the boron found at Volusia Blue Spring.

Despite the broad impact and importance of saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers, little research has been directed towards forecasting saltwater intrusion in areas where the source of saltwater is uncertain. Saline contamination in inland groundwater supplies is a concern for numerous communities in the southern US including the city of Deltona, Florida. Furthermore, conventional numerical tools for forecasting saltwater contamination are heavily dependent on reliable characterization of the physical characteristics of underlying aquifers, information that is often absent or challenging to obtain. To overcome these limitations, a reliable alternative data-driven model for forecasting salinity in a groundwater supply was developed for Deltona using the fast orthogonal search (FOS) method. FOS was applied on monthly water-demand data and corresponding chloride concentrations at water supply wells. Groundwater salinity measurements from Deltona water supply wells were applied to evaluate the forecasting capability and accuracy of the FOS model. Accurate and reliable groundwater salinity forecasting is necessary to support effective and sustainable coastal-water resource planning and management. The available (27) water supply wells for Deltona were randomly split into three test groups for the purposes of FOS model development and performance assessment. Based on four performance indices (RMSE, RSR, NSEC, and R), the FOS model proved to be a reliable and robust forecaster of groundwater salinity. FOS is relatively inexpensive to apply, is not based on rigorous physical characterization of the water supply aquifer, and yields reliable estimates of groundwater salinity in active water supply wells.