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, Division staff said. Public features shown in the demonstration include a searchable document repository (currently hundreds of thousands of digitized records), interactive GIS mapping of water-right locations, data visualizations of reported diversions, and new account-based access for water-right owners, agents and organizational users. Staff tools include automatic conversion of help emails into assignable cases to avoid lost requests.

Division staff gave a short timeline: work kicked off in March 2023; a live system was made available in July 2025; the old system was deprecated in June 2025; and reporting for the water year opens in late October 2025. Brent Vandenberg, supervising geologist and UPWARD project director, said reporting in the new system will consolidate multiple legacy records and reduce the need for ad hoc Public Records Act requests.

Staff and speakers acknowledged there will be a learning curve for both the public and board staff and urged patience in the first reporting season. Division staff said they will take individual, case-by-case approaches to reporting problems that arise during the transition and have scheduled public workshops (including a remote workshop on Nov. 12 and in-person help sessions in multiple counties) to assist water-right holders with account creation and linking their records.

The new system will require account creation and email addresses for primary owners and agents; staff said this is intentional to allow more timely, lower-cost communications (for example, email notices instead of mailed letters) and to enable future tools such as rapid outreach to downstream diverters during flood diversions. Staff noted the digitization program remains ongoing: about a quarter-million documents are already searchable in Cal Waters and more records will be added over the coming years.

Members of the public and water-rights professionals praised the system in public comment. Erin Woolley of the Union of Concerned Scientists called Cal Waters “a huge task” and an important step to improve the board’s data foundation; Pat New and representatives of engineering and water-right consultant firms asked the board to be flexible during the first reporting season because some users will face new fields and workflow changes in annual reporting.

Division staff said annual-reporting forms themselves have not changed in content for 2025; however, the platform’s interface and the SB 88-driven reporting changes may make early reporting more complex for large diverters. Staff emphasized that the statutory annual reporting deadline remains February 1 and that late fees do not kick in until 30 days after that deadline; they also said historic data show few holders actually file in October.

The board and staff encouraged water-right holders to create their Cal Waters accounts promptly once letters with PINs arrive and to use the scheduled workshops and localized onboarding assistance offered by the division. Staff also said they will continue to refine Cal Waters, track bugs and prioritize enhancements with contractor support in the coming months.

The division asked users to flag specific problems and to reach Cal Waters help lines when they encounter errors so staff can triage and fix issues quickly. The board’s members commended the project team for delivering the system on time and under budget and for planning extensive outreach and support during the first reporting season.