Consolidation of clayey contaminant barriers such as aquitards (natural aquifer barriers) and landfill lin- ers can be a cause for early breakthrough of contaminants. The general objective of this research was to numer- ically model the rate of dissipation of pore pressures (soil suction) and change in the void ratio/soil perme- ability characteristics for a loaded black cotton soil (BCS) aquitard layer and thus evaluate the level of ground- water protection in semi-arid regions with BCS cover. Soil suction change was simulated by varying the degree of saturation of the expansive black clay and applying consolidation pressure. A modified Terzaghi’s 1-D consolidation equation was modeled using experimental data from the compressibility characteristics of Black cotton soils for various degrees of saturation. Proposed models for predicting the rate of dissipation of pore pressures and change in void ratio were established for the loaded BCS aquitard layer. The modeling results demonstrate the significance of evaluating the hydraulic properties of soils in relationship to their envi- ronments under simulated groundwater table and degree of saturation conditions.