State Water Board rolls out Cal Waters system to modernize water-rights reporting

The State Water Resources Control Board on Oct. 21 presented its new California Water Accounting, Tracking and Reporting System (“Cal Waters”), a modernized public portal and staff case-management platform intended to replace legacy water-rights databases and speed decision-making. Division of Water Rights officials said the system will allow water-right holders to log in to see and manage all their water-right records in one place and will activate annual reporting in the new platform starting Oct. 22, 2025.

The board framed Cal Waters as a foundational technology upgrade necessary for faster, more transparent water-rights administration. “We need to get faster, more accurate, more transparent data for us to make informed decisions,” said Juliet Christian Smith, deputy director for the Division of Water Rights, during the item’s presentation. The division and its contractor said the system was built under a project called UPWARD and that the contract for implementation was delivered on time and under budget.

Cal Waters combines a public search and downloadable documents with a staff case-management side built on Salesforce,…