State Water Resources Control Board previews Cal Waters rollout; measurement rule (SB 88) updates to align with new platform

State Water Resources Control Board staff presented technical details and a deployment timeline for Cal Waters — a new water-rights data and reporting platform — and outlined proposed changes to SB 88 measurement and reporting regulations intended to align with that platform.

Jeff Parks, product owner for Cal Waters, said the system will provide a single login and a consolidated user interface for water-rights reporters and their agents. He described a dashboard that highlights items “that the reporter would need to work on,” tabbed access to rights information, an integrated geospatial information system to plot points of diversion and places of use, support for spatial file uploads from consultants, and automated GIS attributes to reduce reporter burden.

The presentation said Cal Waters will also add an organization data structure so large holders (for example, multi-office federal agencies or consulting firms) can assign rights to branches, regional offices and staff. Staff said this change should make it easier for large organizations to see how they appear in the state database and to manage multiple records under one account.

Division staff described a digitization effort that has already converted more than 500,000 records to digital form, and noted the division estimates more than 7,000,000 records remain to be digitized. Staff said digitization is a…