Enterococci are used to evaluate the safety of beach waters and studies have identified beach sands as a source of these bacteria. In order to study and quantify the release of microbes from beach sediments, flow column systems were built to evaluate flow of pore water out of beach sediments. Results show a peak in enterococci (average of 10% of the total microbes in core) released from the sand core within one pore water volume followed by a marked decline to below detection. These results indicate that few enterococci are easily removed and that factors other than simple pore water flow control the release of the majority of enterococci within beach sediments. A significantly larger quantity and release of enterococci were observed in cores collected after a significant rain event suggesting the influx of fresh water can alter the release pattern as compared to cores with no antecedent rainfall.

Hydrodynamic modeling is usually necessary for predicting water deliveries to marshes from source reservoirs. A novel approach is developed that decouples the delivery structure hydraulics from the marsh hydrodynamics, allowing these components to be analyzed both separately and in combination. This approach is applied to assess the effectiveness of incorporating spreader canals into water delivery systems in Everglades National Park. The results show that Manning's n in the marsh can be reasonably approximated as a function of VR, in which V is the flow velocity and R is the hydraulic radius; spreader canals can provide substantial percentage increases in water deliveries compared to the smaller structure tailwater pools, and spreader canal outflows can be linear functions of the length of the spreader canal.