State Water Resources Control Board staff review EAR portal, DAC fee-reduction rules and data-entry expectations

State Water Resources Control Board staff summarized how water systems should complete and submit the Electronic Annual Report (EAR) and where reporters can get help.

Gabriela Gutierrez, a customer service team member with the EAR program, opened the session and outlined the reporter workflow: start an EAR, submit it, await regulator review, and resubmit if the regulator returns the report for revisions. "We have found in the past years, that some water systems forget to resubmit after making those revisions," she said, urging reporters to complete the resubmission step so an EAR can be marked complete.

Why it matters: the EAR is the statewide reporting mechanism for drinking-water systems. Errors or missed conditional questions will appear as errors on the finalized page and prevent submission. Staff said some fields on the EAR are prefilled from the agency database and cannot be edited in the form; systems should contact their regulating agency to correct those base records.