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 two‑phase process: an initial minimal tagging to make documents searchable and a later, more granular metadata tagging step led by water‑rights experts to make documents retrievable by multiple criteria.

On SB 88 and measurement regulations, Pablo Ortiz, environmental scientist in the Division of Water Rights, and Sierra Kennison, an engineer with the division, outlined a regulation change package staff has developed to improve compliance and data usability. Staff said current regulations require diverters over 10 acre‑feet per year to measure diversions and submit annual measurement data, and that larger diverters (those over 10,000 acre‑feet per year or 30 cubic feet per second in summer) are subject to continuous public data posting requirements (telemetry). Ortiz said only about 20–23% of diverters submit usable measurement data under the current rules and that the division receives over 1,000 unique file formats each year, limiting staff’s ability to analyze the data.

Kennison summarized the regulation updates staff proposes to address those gaps: restructure and simplify the regulatory text for readability; require standardized file formats and templates through Cal Waters so uploaded measurement files are machine‑readable; remove the regulatory distinction between a “measuring device” and a “measurement method” (if it collects data it is a measuring device); align groundwater recordation reporting with the water year (October–September) rather than the calendar year; clarify who must provide continuous reporting (the presentation used the term “large diversion requirements” rather than telemetry); expand the list of eligible qualified professionals (adding hydrographers, water treatment and distribution operators); permit alternative compliance pathways where those provide equivalent or better data; and require reporters to register an email address in Cal Waters.

Staff said the proposed regulation package was submitted to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) and includes draft text, a statement of reasons and an economic impact assessment. OAL’s publication of the notice of proposed action would trigger a 45‑day public comment period, followed by a public hearing. Staff said they are targeting an effective date of October 1, 2025 for the updated measurement regulation to align with the reporting year and that the first reports affected by the new rule would be due on February 1, 2027.

Staff also described outreach and testing plans: an Upward Advisory Group (UAG) of water‑rights interests convened for iterative feedback (first meeting in September 2023, subsequent meetings including a live demo on February 5), and staff anticipates hands‑on UAG testing in May (subject to cybersecurity work). The timeline staff presented calls for refinement of the Cal Waters interface through July, enrollment of large/complex reporters before go‑live, a July go‑live where users can enroll, then ongoing enrollment and outreach through 2026 and beyond as digitization and tagging scale up.

Board members and the vice chair asked how non‑reporter members of the public, researchers and academia will access information. Staff said Cal Waters will include an electronic content management system to display scanned records and a data warehouse to support broader, documented access (including SQL access for advanced users), and that a public GIS map view will be available without login on day one. Staff cautioned that the system will not instantly fix legacy data quality and that improving historical records will be an ongoing effort over several years.

Why it matters: Cal Waters is intended to give regulators and the public more consistent, searchable, and machine‑readable water‑use and water‑rights data. Staff said standardized uploads and clearer measurement rules are central to using measurement data in modeling and water‑availability assessments.

Next steps noted by staff included public review of the SB 88 regulatory package during the OAL comment period and targeted UAG testing in May, with a planned enrollment go‑live in July and phased outreach and tagging to scale the digitization effort.