Today: the Act at ten
As of October 2026, the parts of AB 1755 that could be met by publishing have largely been met. The parts that needed standards, money, or new data are still open: interoperability protocols, the water-transfers dataset, and the Water Data Administration Fund.
The statute, requirement by requirement
| Requirement | Status | What happened |
|---|
Sources: DWR AB 1755 Implementation Journal (last updated Nov 2024); 2018 Progress Report and protocols; live CKAN API. Draft judgments; see Plate IV for the plan-level scorecard.
The catalog grew by federation, once
Almost all of the growth came in 2019, when ocean and federal water records were harvested in to meet the statutory deadlines. Since 2020 the catalog has added about 2,000 records, under 2% a year.
Total datasets on data.cnra.ca.gov. 2018 figure as reported ("over 1,300"); 2020–2026 from Internet Archive snapshots and the live API. Data: cnra_dataset_counts.csv.
Open questions for the next decade
Is a catalog a platform?
Federation produced findability, not integration. Plan action 3.1.7 called for querying like data through one access point. Nothing does that across agencies yet.
Who funds the plumbing?
The Consortium's 2026 Prop 4 report found that bonds "rarely fund the coordination, governance" behind data. The Act's own fund was never capitalized.
Program systems vs. the platform
The decade's largest water-data investment, water-rights modernization (UPWARD/CalWATRS, a reported $60M over two budgets), came through the Water Board's own program, not AB 1755. Is AB 1755 now the publishing layer for program systems rather than a system of its own?
A plan update
The plan was to be refreshed with each Water Plan. SB 72 launched Water Plan 2028 in February 2026, which is a natural vehicle.
Amending the Act
AB 2728 (2026) was introduced to add hatchery data and a 2027 deadline. It was chaptered on Sept 30, 2026 under a groundwater-fees title, so the AB 1755 amendments appear to have been dropped. Unconfirmed.
Standards
Ten protocol topics listed in 2018 are still "to be developed," including interoperability, QC, federation and security. The Internet of Water's ingestion frameworks offer a template.