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Piloting a Water Rights Information System for California Authors

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Piloting a Water Rights Information System for California Authors JULY 2021 PILOTING A Policy Report CLIMATE WATER RIGHTS & ENERGY INFORMATION SYSTEM WATER FOR CALIFORNIA OCEANS LAND USE “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” — William Gibson Records Room. State Water Resources Control Board, Sacramento, CA JULY 2021 | POLICY REPORT PILOTING A WATER RIGHTS INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR CALIFORNIA AUTHORS Michael Kiparsky DIRECTOR, WHEELER WATER INSTITUTE, CENTER FOR LAW, ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT Kathleen Miller RESEARCH FELLOW, WHEELER WATER INSTITUTE, CENTER FOR LAW, ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT Richard Roos-Collins PRINCIPAL, WATER AND POWER GROUP PC (PERSONAL CAPACITY ONLY, SEE P. 76) RESEARCH ADVISOR, UC BERKELEY LAW’S CENTER FOR LAW, ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT Emma Roos-Collins PARALEGAL, WATER AND POWER GROUP PC (PERSONAL CAPACITY ONLY, SEE P. 76) Dan Rademacher EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREENINFO NETWORK Contact Michael Kiparsky at [email protected]. THE CENTER FOR LAW, ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT CLEE channels the expertise and creativity of the Berkeley Law community into pragmatic policy solutions to environmental and energy challenges. CLEE works with government, business and the nonprofit sector to help solve urgent problems requiring innovative, often interdisciplinary approaches. Drawing on the combined expertise of faculty, staff, and students across the University of California, Berkeley, CLEE strives to translate empirical findings into smart public policy solutions to better environmental and energy governance systems. DESIGN Template design and layout: Image credits: Jordan Rosenblum Adobe Stock Document design and layout: Odd Moxie ContentseCutive summary 8 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7 1. INTRODUCTION 14 1.1 Who Should Read this Report 17 1.2 Report Organization 19 1.3 Methods and Approach 19 2. WHY? CONCEPT AND RESEARCH 21 2.1 California’s Current System: eWRIMS and RMS 21 2.2 Functionalities for Decision Making 23 2.3 Cross-Jurisdictional Comparison 28 3. HOW? PILOT PROJECT AND PROOF OF CONCEPT 41 3.1 Developing and Testing a Pilot Database 41 3.2 Technical Considerations for a Water Rights Data System 46 3.3 Towards Estimating Funding Requirements for Digitizing Water Rights Data 55 4. WHAT NEXT? 57 4.1 Vision: A Modern Water Rights and Use Information System for California 57 4.2 Additional Useful WRIS Characteristics 62 4.3 Key Next Steps and Unanswered Questions 69 CONCLUSION 73 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 75 REVIEWERS 75 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 76 FUNDING 76 GLOSSARY OF TERMS 77 TABLE OF ACRONYMS 79 APPENDIX A: METHODS 80 APPENDIX B: ILLUSTRATION OF eWRIMS DATABASE SYSTEM SEARCH FUNCTIONS 81 APPENDIX C: SEARCH FUNCTIONALITIES OF eWRIMS 85 APPENDIX D: DOCUMENT AND PRIORITY SEARCH FUNCTION DETAILS 87 APPENDIX E: EXAMPLE USE CASES FOR A WRIS 94 APPENDIX F: DETAILS OF SCANNING AND DIGITIZATION PROCESS FOR THE MONO BASIN PILOT 101 APPENDIX G: METADATA ASSIGNMENT PROCESS AND PROTOCOLS 102 APPENDIX H: QA/QC OPTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS 108 ENDNOTES 109 tables and Figures Table 1. Summary of water rights foruse cases 25 Table 2. Characteristics of water rights databases in western jurisdictions 30 Table 3. Data search functions in western jurisdictions 34 Table 4. Water supply data, quality data, and monitoring tools 36 Table 5. Cost of scanning records in the pilot. 43 Table 6. Cost of indexing documents in the pilot. 44 Table 7. Foundational elements of a water rights data system. 59 Table 8. Search abilities and limitations of eWRIMS. 85 Table 9. Summary of example use cases for a WRIS 94 Table 10. Use case: Can the State Water Board approve a new water rights permit? 98 Table 11. Use case: Can a current water right holder or claimant divert water? 99 Table 12. Use case: Can a water user sell or trade surface water this year? 99 Table 13. Use case: What is the environmental water balance by stream segment and system? 100 Figure 1. A Points of Diversion (POD) search with multiple filter options. 13 Figure 2. Roadmap to this report 19 Figure 3. Conceptual illustration of levels of water data availability and usability 37 Figure 4. The Cariboo Water Tool 39 Figure 5. The Cariboo Tool’s streamflow monitoring function 40 Figure 6. The Cariboo Tool’s watershed mapping tool 40 Figure 7. POD search with multiple filter options 45 Figure 8. Public water rights records search function from eWRIMS 81 Figure 9. Table generated for a water right in eWRIMS 82 Figure 10. Table of available reports in eWRIMS 82 Figure 11. 2011 Supplemental statement of water diversion and use 83 Figure 12. Location of Water Right in eWRIMS 84 Figure 13. Document search results from the pilot 88 Figure 14. Document with forms for metadata suggestions 89 Figure 15. POD search with multiple filter options 90 Figure 16. A single POD with metadata 91 Figure 17. Stream-order sort with selected POD and water right . 92 Figure 18. Date-sorted list of hydrologically connected PODs. 93 Figure 19. Screenshot of the indexing process. 105 exeCutive summary California’s complex water management challenges are growing and intensifying. Systemic stressors like the more frequent and severe droughts and floods driven by climate change are only making it harder to respond. Accordingly, California needs to dramatically improve the ability of local, regional, and State entities to make agile and effective water management decisions. We believe doing so will require enhanced understanding of our water resources and how they align with the needs of a range of agencies and stakeholders. Water rights data provide a crucial opportunity for advancing this understanding. We find that modernizing water rights data is feasible, affordable, and can increase transparency and clarity for better decision making. 7 Center For law, energy & the environment ater data are currently insufficient to meet the needs of California’s existing water management challenges, let alone to enable the W next generation of water innovations. California has recognized this challenge with a raft of recent legislation and policy actions geared towards improving the accessibility and useability of data to support water decision making. Water rights data are a particularly important ingredient for under- standing our water system, but they are currently difficult or impossible to access for modern decision making. California relies largely on paper records for foundational information on water rights and water use that are central to its legal system, including documents such as permits, licenses, and a range of other documents that support claims of right. Where available, water use records submitted by water rights holders are also often in paper form. Even if they were fully available and organized, paper records cannot support the kind of complex decisions California water managers must make on rapid timelines. California’s existing Electronic Water Rights Information System (eWRIMS) does not effectively support water management decision making in most use cases. eWRIMS is incompletely populated and lacks basic functionality and interoperability with other platforms. As a result of such information deficits, stakeholders and government entities have trouble understanding how much water is available to particular water users at particular times—information that is central to basic water allocation decisions, to planning for changes in future water availability, and to unlocking the system-scale efficiencies and innovations that underpin most forward-looking visions for California’s water future. This report describes an effort to evaluate the potential for California to move its water data systems into the 21st century. Through public workshops, focus groups, comparative research, use case exercises, and the development of a pilot water rights documents database system, we examined options, and evaluated opportunities and potential pitfalls. Our findings suggest that dramatic improvements in water rights and use data are not only possible, but are well within California’s reach for California, if the State administration and key stakeholders are willing to take the necessary steps. RESEARCH PROCESS AND PILOT PROJECT We began with a simple set of questions: Does California need to modernize its water rights and use information system into an online record that is more complete, accessible, and useable to support water decision making? Is it feasible and affordable for California to develop such a system? If so, what should be the key elements of such a system? And how can it be actualized? To answer these questions, we conducted a three-stage process of research and engagement. First, we developed conceptual and analytical background centered around a series of use cases which asked how water rights data plays into water management on a broader scale, combined with legal and institu- tional analysis and a process of stakeholder engagement. Next, we surveyed 8 Piloting a water rights inFormation system For CaliFornia other western states, observing how documents and records are digitized and maintained online. Finally, we designed and built the basic foundation of a water rights documents database. This last step involved scanning, digitizing, and assigning metadata to over 130,000 pages of water rights documents from the Mono Basin, resulting in a proof of concept for a searchable digital database of legal records. TAKEAWAYS FOR A MODERN WATER RIGHTS INFORMATION SYSTEM (WRIS) Our main research findings are simple but profoundly supportive of State action: • Accessible and useable water rights data will benefit water rights holders, other stakeholders, and regulators. • Modernizing California’s water rights database in response to this demand is feasible from a technical standpoint, and its cost would be surprisingly reasonable. A range of conclusions augment these two key messages. As California seeks to improve water-related decision making at all scales, the following consid- erations can guide its efforts to develop a more accessible and useful WRIS. 1. California should pursue a comprehensive, transparent, and ac- cessible water rights information system. Such a system would help ensure equal access to vital information and help establish a shared baseline of understanding of the current state of water rights and use in the State.
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