The Law: AB 1755, the Open and Transparent Water Data Act
Signed by Governor Brown on September 23, 2016 (Dodd), and in force January 1, 2017. It added Part 4.9 to the Water Code (§12400 et seq.). The Act told DWR, working with the State Water Board, CDFW and the Water Quality Monitoring Council, to build one statewide, integrated water-data platform. It also required protocols that make state data findable, documented and open.
Four dates written into statute
Every deadline fell within four years of signing. The hover layer shows what each one required.
Water Code §12406, §12410. Chaptered text: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.
What the platform must carry
§12415 names specific data, not just "water data." That list is the clearest test of whether the platform exists in the form the Legislature described.
| Source | Required data | Today's primary home (see Plate VI) |
|---|---|---|
| DWR | State Water Project reservoir operations; groundwater use and levels; urban water use; land use | CNRA Open Data, CDEC, SGMA Portal, WUEdata |
| State Water Board | Water rights; diversions; water quality | eWRIMS → CalWATRS; CEDEN / CIWQS; data.ca.gov |
| CDFW | Fish abundance and distribution | BIOS, CNDDB, data.cnra.ca.gov |
| USGS | Streamflow conditions | NWIS / Water Data for the Nation |
| USBR | Central Valley Project operations | CVO reports, RISE |
| USFWS · USFS · NOAA Fisheries | Fish abundance | Program-specific (e.g., SacPAS, CalFish) |
| Water market | Completed transfers and exchanges: volume, price, delivery method, buyer and seller, water right | Partial; see Plate VI |
§12415(b)–(c). The right-hand column is the atlas's draft mapping, not statutory text.
Who the Act names
Lead
- Department of Water Resources: create, operate and maintain the platform
In consultation with
- State Water Resources Control Board
- Department of Fish and Wildlife
- California Water Quality Monitoring Council
May partner with
- Nonprofits and other state agencies to build and run the platform (§12410)
Teeth and money
- State grant and contract recipients must follow the protocols or lose funding eligibility (§12406)
- Water Data Administration Fund, "upon appropriation," with voluntary donations allowed (§12420)
Reading the statute as a practitioner
The Act focuses on publication: getting existing data out, documented and interoperable. It does not require new monitoring. The 2018 Strategic Plan deliberately reached further and took on the full data life cycle, from use cases to data-driven decisions. The gap between what the statute mandates and what the plan aspired to explains much of the decade that followed.