Here is a web site to help Californian's understand water in the state.

Understand Water in California

Presenting real-time, interactive visualizations of how we use, manage and understand water in California. By visualizing and promoting water data for the state, we are making it possible to understand our cumulative usage of water and how this effects the many farms, individuals, governments, and businesses that rely on water availablity for healthy economies and ecosystems.

As the needs of our state shift with the changing demands placed on us by population growth and climate change, we want to give the gift of broad insight and clear communication to the many professionals and concerned citizens who work so hard to protect and deliver one of our most precious resources.

Water is a shared resource; as such, it is managed by the state on behalf of the people. To achieve our interdependent goals of healthy ecosystems, economies, farms and cities, we strive to bring you up-to-date, clear and accurate information to inform your decisions.

The water rights section works.

THE RIGHT TO BEAR KNOWLEDGE

“If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.”
Peter Drucker

The primary challenge with water in California is not its scarcity, but rather how we manage it. Many experts have mutually concluded, that a major first step to improving our management of water is by reforming how we account for it. Whether a lack of adequate statements of diversion for surface and subsurface waters, or the existence of a fine grained environmental monitoring network, it is clear that we could do a better job of recording and measuring. New instruments and institutions are necessary to accomplish this. It is not a question of technology, but one of techniques. The technology is available and affordable, but the institutions and practices of how we measure and document our water resources are not fully mature. We must get control of our understanding of what is in the system at any given point. We owe it to ourselves, our economy, and our ecosystem. This effort benefits all stakeholders.