The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) is responsible for reviewing and issuing water use permits in South Florida. For complex aquifer systems, the SFWMD approved numerical system simulation models are employed for impact assessments as part of the permit requirements. The use of numeric models such as MODFLOW is highly recommended by the District and adopted among the applicants. The use of deeper aquifers as a water source has been growing faster in Florida due to results of improvements in Reverse Osmosis (RO) and Aquifer Storage Recovery (ASR) techniques and increasing limitations on use of the surficial freshwater aquifers. In case of deeper aquifers, increase in salinity along with temperature gradient is responsible for density dependent flows. For a withdrawal that involves density variable flows, SEAWAT2000 seems to be a more appropriate numeric simulation model. SEAWAT 2000 is a version of MODFLOW 2000 with the variable density flow process and the integrated MT3DMS transport process used for simulation of three dimensional, variable-density, transient groundwater flow in porous media. Drawdown results will be simulated using both MODFLOW-2000 and SEAWAT-2000. Comparison of drawdown results in terms of horizontal extent and magnitude of drawdown contours for the same groundwater withdrawals will be presented and discussed along with its implications. The implications will lead the discussion towards more effective use of Groundwater Modeling.
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