State Water Resources Control Board rolls out Cal Waters; users must create accounts and link records with new PINs

The State Water Resources Control Board’s Division of Water Rights on Friday walked users through Cal Waters, a rebuilt online system for filing annual water‑use reports and accessing digitized water‑rights records. Jeff Parks, the division’s senior engineer and product owner for Cal Waters, said account creation is required for users who will file directly and recommended agents or organizations set up users appropriately.

Parks said the Board mailed about 12,000 letters containing one-time PINs to individual water‑right holders to link their previous records to the new system. "This PIN is different; it is not the same PIN that you received in the past," Parks said, explaining a single Cal Waters PIN links all records associated with an individual rather than issuing separate credentials per water right.

Why this matters: Cal Waters centralizes filings and previously paper or hard‑to‑retrieve documents, which the Board says will speed staff access to data and improve transparency. Parks said staff side workflows were overhauled, too, allowing help requests to be tracked as cases so the division can respond more efficiently.

The system’s practical steps and timeline: Users can create accounts at calwaters.waterboards.ca.gov and must use two‑factor authentication. Individuals should use the PIN sent to them to migrate records; organizations will follow a different setup flow that lets multiple employees manage a shared set of water rights without sharing a username or password. Parks and Sam Warner, the testing and training lead, explained agents are assigned on a record‑by‑record basis and that a change‑of‑ownership form can be used to add or remove agents.

Deadlines, enforcement and fees: Parks said the statutory reporting deadline will not be extended and the division is not currently extending the deadline. The Board has introduced a new late fee with a 30‑day grace period that begins in March; Parks said enforcement staff’s priority this year is to help users file rather than to punish those who show they attempted to comply.

Public access and search: Annual reports and other water‑rights records are publicly searchable without a Cal Waters account, Parks demonstrated. The system includes record and document search, a map viewer with parcel layers, and downloadable exports. Parks said the Board plans to publish flat files and update data.ca.gov with more complete datasets and—eventually—an API for larger queries.

Practical notes from the demo: Parks showed the annual‑reporting workflow, noting fields are intentionally permissive this year to lower barriers to filing. Users can save sections, withdraw in‑progress submissions, and file or amend electronic reports going back up to five years (the Board said users can file back to 2020 in most cases). Measurement device metadata is managed separately from annual reports; uploads and supplemental documents can be attached when necessary.

Next steps and support: Parks said staff will help users with PIN or migration problems, and the Board’s resources and help pages will publish links and guidance from the webinar. He asked users to submit screenshots when encountering errors to assist troubleshooting and reiterated that the migration is intended to be a one‑time setup.

The Board scheduled additional supporting materials and resources on its public resources page and will follow up on specific migration cases.