SACRAMENTO, California — California water regulators formally unveiled a revamped online depository for water rights records Tuesday as they try to get a better handle on how water is divided up and used in the state.
What happened: The State Water Resources Control Board showcased a new online portal at its Tuesday meeting that aims to be a one-stop shop for individual water rights holders in the state to report their annual use and for regulators — and the public — to see who has a right to how much water and where. The portal includes digitized copies of documents that are sometimes over a century old and were previously only accessible in an in-person vault.
“If you want to do any real-time coordination, this access and management is a really powerful new tool that we never had before,” said Erik Ekdahl, the water board’s chief deputy director overseeing water rights.
Why this matters: California has been working to digitize its archaic water rights system since 2021 to make it easier for regulators to track water use, enforce drought restrictions and facilitate groundwater recharge. The portal gives regulators and the public much clearer access to information about who has a right to the state’s overall water supplies and how they’re using them at a time when the state is anticipating those supplies decreasing by 10 percent by 2040 because of climate change. By one estimate, California water regulators have granted people in the state rights to five times more water than is on average available in any given year.
