Pumping Saline Groundwater: An Effective Tool for Controlling Seawater Intrusion in Coastal Aquifers

This paper investigates the effectiveness of saline water pumping from coastal regions as a technique for controlling seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers while allowing the freshwater pumping to continue as usual. SUTRA, a variable-density ground-water flow with solute or energy transport, was used to simulate the flow and solute transport processes under various excitations of an idealized confined coastal aquifer. The simulations were conducted in a two-dimensional vertical view to account for the density variation. The equipotential and equiconcentration were presented to demonstrate correlation between groundwater flow and solute transport. Saline water pumping from coastal zones can be designed to semi-isolate the saline water flow field from the freshwater flow field. Therefore, the seawater intrusion will not be allowed to migrate far inland beyond the saline water pumping zone.