Report Diversions – All Water Rights

Biggest Diverter In The Galaxy!

I know and worked for the Biggest Diverter of Water In the Milky Way Galaxy! And this is not some alien from Marvel, DC, Star Trek, or any other alternate universe! How big is big? The numbers are, to borrow a word that I do know what it means: inconceivable!

A white flatbed truck with a cylindrical tank mounted on its back, parked beside a building with a brown garage door.

When I was still a bureaucrat, overseeing the Watermaster Service Section at the Department of Water Resources in Red Bluff, I was helping a lady on Hayfork Creek whose water was disappearing from Hay Fork Creek. She said that a water truck operator was filling a hundred or more tanks a day (!) and it was drying up the creek so she and her senior citizen neighbors couldn’t divert their small domestic water rights. I had to tell her that this wasn’t part of our watermaster service, but I gave her the usual things to try: complain to the Water Board (since it was under their regulation), call your supervisor, call your legislator, talk to the local newspaper, call the TV station, start a protest…. The problem ultimately got resolved because the guy didn’t have a water right, and he had to pay a fine, get a permit, and take less water…for irrigating non-standard crops if you know what I mean.

Table displaying water right search results with columns for application ID, permit ID, license ID, water right type, status, holder name, face amount, county, and action links.

While this was going on I did some searching of water rights with the Water Board’s eWRIMS database ( it was clunky but I sure liked it better than I do CalWATRS). I found a very large diversion, over 1 million acre-feet if memory serves. When I looked at the map I knew there had to be a mistake of some kind. I talked to someone at the Water Board – how do they reveal diversion amounts for reasonableness? Turns out they didn’t, and that helped make National News later on.

When I retired from the state, I looked into these numbers one day when I wasn’t doing anything else. The diverters were obviously upset and they knew the numbers were large, but what was going on? Then the 2018 news was fantastic! And in 2019 we read articles like “Trinity diverters reported using one trillion acre feet of water, more than all of the earth’s water.” Wow! How was someone even ABLE to report that?? But that’s not even the best part. They ended up reporting WAY more than a measly 1 trillion acre-feet – think quintillions of acre-feet. Unimaginable numbers. How much is that? Here is the Supplemental Statement filed for 2013, with values 1 followed by 18 zeroes, and 1 followed by 20 zeroes, even 1 followed by 21 zeroes. This is all public information but I won’t post any names, you can go look them up if you want to. Big BIG numbers:

Here’s that table with all the zeroes shown. Suspiciously large, exact, identical numbers. How does that happen?

A table displaying monthly data for 'Rate of diversion (CFS)', 'Amount directly diverted or collected to storage (Acre-Feet)', and 'Amount beneficially used (Acre-Feet)', with values represented in large numerical formats.

In 2018, I looked up these diverters. They were in trouble with the Water Board, I wanted to meet them myself, and who knows, maybe I could actually help them since this is my business. I talked with the lady first, and asked, what happened?

She said, “Well, I tried calling the Water Board to ask, what kind of measurement device should I put in, and where can I buy one? The person I talked to said, ‘This is your water right, and it is up to you to figure out how to measure it, that’s not our job. Bye.’ So I was mad. They’re the experts, how can they treat people like that? I don’t want to get in trouble for not measuring. Then I thought, if they won’t help me, maybe I can get their attention by increasing my diversion amounts. I mean, I have no idea how much I am diverting, and they won’t help me even guess, so why not? So I put in 9 9’s in every box. No way they were going to miss that! Now instead of me getting no help, they’ll call me and you bet they’ll help because they don’t want bad numbers reported. Right?”

Except the Water Board did not notice. Still no help for our diverters. The next year, she called again. Different person, same response, even more rude. “That’s your job, not ours, and you have to figure it out. We don’t give advice.” Guess what happened next? Even bigger numbers!

A close-up view of a Seametrix flow meter displaying a reading of 0.00 GPM, mounted alongside a data logger with various wires connected.

By 2013, she entered a “1” and then held down the “0” key until she filled up each box. For some reason boxes could hold slightly different numbers of digits. She found the limits of what the system could do. I couldn’t stand it: “What happened next?” She says “Well NOW the Water Board noticed, because somebody saw our filing and called a newspaper. The Water Board people were embarrassed so now they were going to do something about it. We ended up in a room full of lawyers in Sacramento telling us how horrible we are, and we’re going to have big fines. I asked one of the lawyers, ‘How big is the leg on this table?’ He said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ ‘Well, you are asking me how much water we actually diverted, but you can’t tell me how big a table leg is?’ That pretty much ended the meeting. Then there was the hearing, then they said we’d have to pay a $210,000 fine. We said, ‘Fine, you can have the property, it’s not worth that much.’ So they finally reduced it to $10,000 and all of that could be used to install a measurement device and fix our filings.”

An open gray equipment box mounted on a metal pipe, containing a data logger and cables, surrounded by a forest floor covered in fallen leaves and moss.

And that’s what they did. They hired me, and I and my son Devin went out and installed the device you see here. I also revised all of their Supplemental Statements to estimate more reasonable values – more like 1.3 acre-feet per year, with no zeroes. That pipe sure won’t hold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 CFS. Not even 1 cfs, given the length and the slope of the pipeline.

So, how much water was reported in 2013? Well, the total volume was reported as 1,100,100,000,000,000,000,000 acre-feet. The volume of the Earth, if you calculate it with (4/3) * PI * R^3, is only 905,904,631,040,907,000 acre-feet. That means they reported diverting 1,214 EARTH-SIZED BALLS OF WATER IN A YEAR!! They were the biggest diverters in the whole Milky Way Galaxy!

CalWATRS – improvement or just change?

How is the Water Board’s CalWATRS database working out, and is it an improvement on eWRIMS? In summary, it’s changed, and so far the changes take more of our time to enter and review information. The Initial Statement to enter new water rights is working poorly.

The part of CalWATRS that works well is that there are a few really good folks that work with it, like Jeffrey Parks (Jeff.Parks@waterboards.ca.gov) and Carmen (Carmen.Artrip@waterboards.ca.gov). They and a few others are the most positive aspect of CalWATRS, I think. Jeff and Carmen always get back to me quickly, sometimes the same day. Of course, they want you to initiate all new contacts with CalWATRS-Help@waterboards.ca.gov and not bug people directly.

There was no pilot program with real water right holders before October 1, 2025. It would work much better if it had been tried out with 10 water right holders, including several who are not expert with the use of computers and have just one water right. That is a basic rule for any technology implementation – make it work for a few people first. The Water Board did not do that. Well, there is a possibility that some folks got to preview it, but none of what was learned was applied.

Instead, we ALL got to suffer through it, try things, complain when it failed, and sometimes just wait some days or weeks until it was fixed. So many things were working poorly that I waited until December to start filing annual reports. Our rallying cry is “CalWATRS will work in 2027!” We can only hope.

My experience filing several hundred annual reports for Water Year 2025 is that it takes about 1-1/2 to 2 times as long to file as it did in eWRIMS. The wait between pages is longer for some of the pages, and there are more pages.

When the form is ready to submit, there is a page to review your entered information. However, the page is mostly blank. Don’t worry – I have gone back and reviewed page by page the information, and all the information was usually there.

Once your information is submitted, a PDF can be immediately downloaded, the same as with the old eWRIMS system. The PDFs seem to have all of the entered information. They are harder to read than the eWRIMS forms, and it takes longer to review the information. Next year…hopefully….

A webpage titled 'Initial Statement of Use' from the California Water Boards, featuring a prominent river flowing through a vibrant autumn landscape with colorful trees.

The Initial Statement submittal process is mostly not working:

There are no text boxes. There is not even a Supplementary Text Box at the end, somewhere before the signature, in which a user can enter text such as “Please refer to attached map “Real Map Of All Features Of This Water Right.pdf” to see the true map of this water right, including all Places Of Use, Points Of Diversion, Ditches, Measurement Devices, Etc.”.
No existing maps can be uploaded and be visible in the Initial Statement. Maps can only be in attached files. When submitting paper Initial Statements before CalWATRS’s debut, maps were part of the submittal and were always visible when downloading the Initial Statement. Existing maps can include many types of relevant information that didn’t fit into the paper forms…and a lot less information is allowed to be entered into CalWATRS compared to the paper forms.
No KMLs of polygons can be entered for the Place Of Use. Digitizing simple Places Of Use works okay, but complex polygons can take significant time.
Only one Point Of Diversion can be entered. Many water rights have more than one POD, so the Initial Statement is inaccurate as soon as it is entered.
Only one water source can be entered. For complex parcels or ranches with multiple water sources, this makes it impossible to list all the actual water sources.
Points Of Diversion cannot be edited.
Places Of Use cannot be edited.
Most of the basemap layers are not working. For example, the public ownership parcels layer is not working. I wanted to enter a large Place Of Use polygon using ownership parcels, but there was no information to do that. Instead of fighting CalWATRS and alternating between Google Earth and CalWATRS for an hour or more, I finally digitized the boundaries of PLSS Sections that contain the Place Of Use.
Uploaded maps have to be downloaded to be viewed. CalWATRS should allow uploading at least one, preferably many existing maps that are viewable within the CalWATRS Initial Statement itself. The modern Internet can easily handle image files including JPEG, TIF, PNG, BMP, GIF, and so on, as well as Adobe Acrobat PDFs.
No Measurement Device can be entered.
The CalWATRS Initial Statement entry system as it now exists does not allow water right holders, agents, consulting engineers, or others enter all the required information. Therefore, many people inputting an Initial Statement will have to lie to sign the document. One of my Initial Statements allowed only one of 22 Points Of Diversion to be entered at all, and the Place Of Use is only the boundaries of PLSS Sections that encompass the Place Of Use. I had to sign the document to enter it into the system. Without even one text box to enter comments, I could not make the document a true representation of the water right. No PDF of the entered information can be downloaded as a draft of what was entered into the Initial Statement. All that can be given to water right holders to prove an Initial Statement was entered is a cryptic email that does not have the Water Right ID. This forces a water right holder or agent to log in and go through all the pages just to see what was entered.

Flow calculation Excel sheet for flume hourly data

How do you calculate hourly flows from flumes, weirs, and orifices, when what you actually measure is water depths? That’s how these devices work: the device creates an engineered curve, so that the depth at a certain distance from the entrance or exit gives an accurate flow.

Getting the flow equation is simple enough – for the flume below, flow = 11.6948 * (depth + 0.0068932) ^ 1.64505. What if you divert for seven months of the irrigation season? 7 months * 30 days * 24 hours. That comes to 5,040 measurements – too much to calculate by hand.

A concrete and metal water control structure with a gate and surrounding vegetation, situated in a streamside environment.

You’ll need to use Excel or similar software to handle all the data. Here is an example of a spreadsheet for this flume. Data is copied into the sheet from the water level logger output, then the spreadsheet automatically calculates the corrected depth, flow, and hourly volume.

Why are there columns “Year” and “Month” in this spreadsheet? Those are for pivot tables, which can quickly sum many thousands of rows of data, by year and month. A pivot table is used to get summed monthly flows and the maximum flow for each month, which are necessary to fill out your annual report to the Water Board.

A downloadable Excel file of this example spreadsheet is included at the bottom of this post.

Spreadsheet showing data for the Watchman Briggs 3-Foot Wide, 2-Inch-Ramp Flume, including water depth, flow rates, and calculations from the Hobo MX-2001 Transducer as of April 2, 2026.

Flume Flow Calcs 20260402 a Download

Write It Down (Or Possibly Lose A Water Right)

I got a call from a distraught diverter. “My grandfather has irrigated this land since at least 1910, from _______ Creek. Everyone knew about it at the time, we get 1.2 cubic feet per second for 105 acres of pasture up here. Nobody was worried about filing on water rights back then, so we didn’t file at the Water Board until a few years ago. But a new guy moved in next door and he says we don’t have a water right, it’s all his water. We do have a well but we don’t use it until late in the season when the creek flow drops way down. The neighbor claims we only use the well and never use the water from the creek. Then he went and filed a complaint with the Water Board saying we never used water, which is a lie. We got some letters from the state, we figured they were just the regular reminders and we were really busy. It turns out one of the letters said the Water Board wanted to come to the ranch and see if we really divert water. Now we have a letter that says we have to ‘cease and desist’ within 30 days or pay $500 per day fines! What can we do about this?”

I asked, “Did your grandfather, parents, or you write down notes when you were irrigating? Do you have photos at the diversion showing you were taking water? Did you measure the flow somehow?”

“No, we don’t have anything like that. But everyone around here used to know who used the water! It wasn’t a problem until there were new owners.”

Have you heard the saying, “Write it down, or it never happened.”? That is true in everything – conversations, phone calls, purchases,

From one legal website, here is a list:

What Types of Contracts are Required to be in Writing? Contracts that are for the transfer or sale of land, are for the sale of goods over $500, cannot be fully completed within one year of signing (according to the contracts terms), are related to marriage, involve a promise to pay another person’s debt (“surety contracts”), or will continue beyond the lifetime of a party performing the contract.

Water rights definitely belong on the list!

When I was a bureaucrat, I learned early on to document the work I was doing, document processes so I and others could do some technical process faster next time, and document all important conversations. When email came around, I learned to email things to myself to have a record. Then, 5 or 10 years later when questions came up, I had a dated electronic document to answer with.

So what happened with that diverter who called? The diverter called the Water Board staffer who wrote the letter and arranged a visit to the property. I went out and took photos, measured the diversion, put in a temporary measurement device, and wrote a report detailing all that the diverter told me. Two Water Board engineers visited and wrote up a report. Then nothing happened for three years. The diverter is still using water from the creek, and now is measuring the amount of water and reporting it every year. Hopefully the state won’t take any further action, but we don’t know.

The lesson is, keep records! Even if something happened 100 years ago, write down now what you know about your water right, the diversion rate, the acreage irrigated, number of livestock. When a complaint comes, it’s a lot easier to refute when you can just hand over a written account.

Do Something Wrong, Instead Of Nothing Right

Do something wrong, rather than nothing at all. Have you ever heard that before? I have heard it from Army veterans, a boss, even an elder of a church. George Patton said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” A non-military way to say that is, “A poor plan now is better than no plan at all.”

What it means to you and me is, if action is necessary, do something, maybe ANYthing, rather than freezing in place or ignoring a problem. This is obvious when you see a tornado 5 miles away, for example; either drive away from it if you are in a car, or take shelter if you are on foot. If you have a plumbing leak in the house and no parts to replace broken pipe, then put a bucket under it, or turn off the valve, and call a plumber. All of us have seen a TV show (or maybe had it happen to us) where the bad guy pointed a rifle and said, “Don’t move”. What do we all say to the TV? “Don’t just stand there, run!”. Doing nothing is a much worse choice, if the result for freezing in place is death or injury.

What about water rights – how does doing something wrong help? Everyone knows by now that surface water diverters need measurement devices, so put in a weir box and boards and measure your flow before the threats come from the Water Board, your watermaster, your ditch tender, or your neighbor. Even just stick horizontal boards in a ditch and seal the sides with plastic – something to take positive action to reduce future pain.

Remember to file the information for the measurement device with the Water Board, either via your annual report of diversions, or using the Water Right Form and Survey Submittal Portal.

Take a look at the blog posts below. There is enough information and how-to directions, that you should be able to do it well enough to satisfy the Water Board. Check out these posts:

There is a philosophy based in law and a lot of experience, that says don’t put any controls on yourself until the court or government makes

you. Why remodel your house to accommodate the wiring or plumbing, if you aren’t selling the house and everything works okay right now? Who would put a lot of money into an old truck to make it pass smog, if it just might pass a smog check the next time it has to be done? What farmer would change how he irrigates or ranches if everything still operates and the bank will keep making operating loans?

All of the Water Board deadlines have passed to install measurement devices, or file Alternative Compliance Plans. If you haven’t got your device or plan done yet, get a Request For Additional Time done as soon as possible.

Be proactive. Take some inexpensive, temporary action. Educate yourself for free with some time in the Internet. Even a small, less-than-perfect improvement in your measurement device, flow and water use record keeping, can pay back a lot more when you have to deal with potential Water Board fines, a court case, or even just an angry neighbor in the future.

Converting Logger Pressure to Depth & Storage/Flows

If you have a pipeline as part of your diversion, then an in-line meter with an integrated data collector can be installed. The data files from these units are

McCrometer McPropeller inline meter with data collector

easily readable in Excel, and the files can be sent directly to the Water Board to meet the requirements of SB 88.

What if you don’t have a pipeline? Then your flow needs to be measured in the open ditch with a weir, flume, or orifice. These devices measure the flow but they don’t record the data. To continuously record data, a submersible logging instrument must be used to measure the water pressure at the bottom of the box. These logging instruments are commonly put into stilling wells that are inside or outside the measurement device.

Flume with attached stilling well for water level logger

How are water pressure logger measurements converted to diverted flows or reservoir storage? Why does anyone even have to have an electronic pressure logger? Onset Computer, PMC, In-Situ, , and other manufacturers sell data loggers and water level loggers, not pressure loggers, so why is this post talking about measuring pressures at all?

Bluetooth Hobo Logger, cabled to recorder and barometric compensator unit – least expensive option for a single location

Loggers record pressure, because that is the easiest physical attribute to measure. A data logger in water does not know how deep it is, and it does not

know how much flow is going by, or how much water is being stored in a reservoir. Pressures relate directly to static (standing) water depths, and then equations convert the depths to flows, or to reservoir storage volumes.

How is pressure converted to depth? It’s an easy calculation – water that is one foot deep has a pressure of 0.4335 psi at the bottom. So, if your logger measures 1.60 psi, then the calculation to get depth is 1.60 psi / 0.4335 psi per foot = 3.69 feet of depth.

Note that water level loggers can be of two types. The least expensive are completely submersible, and do not compensate for barometric pressure. For an idea of the readings of barometric pressure in a measurement device, a 2 foot deep logger records a pressure of 0.8670 psi. Atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 14.7 psi, and high in the mountains may be 12.0 psi. Air pressure is much greater than those measured in ditches. Usually two of these loggers are used at once, one in the water, and one out of the water measuring only air pressure. This also eliminates the variability in pressure due to weather changes.

The second type of data logger compensates for barometric pressure at the same time water pressure is being recorded. That way, the water and air pressure data sets do not have to be combined before conversion to depths. These loggers were always more expensive until the Bluetooth Hobo water level logger came along; as of February 2019 I found that it is the least expensive option for a single location.

Now that you can calculate any depth, how do you convert depths to reservoir storage? That requires an Area-Capacity curve, also known as an Elevation-Storage curve. The points can be picked off the curve. For example, in the curve below, a depth of 8.5 feet would correspond to an elevation of 2,802.5 feet, and a reservoir storage volume of 30 acre-feet.

An owner of a reservoir with a capacity over 10 acre-feet must collect monthly storage values. That’s easily done by hand. However, a reservoir with a capacity of 50 AF requires weekly measurement; over 200 AF requires daily measurement; and over 1,000 AF requires hourly measurement. That is really tedious to do by hand.

This is where an Excel spreadsheet can make the task a whole lot easier! The spreadsheets shown below are just for this. The first sheet helps translate a graph into a table of elevations and storage volumes. The second sheet translates collected pressure values into depth and storage values, for as many data points as needed.

For diversion ditches from a stream, how are pressures converted to flows? The logger is in a stilling well, usually a pipe connected to the inside or outside wall of the weir, flume, or orifice. It measures pressure, which is easily converted to depths.

As with reservoirs, Excel spreadsheets make the conversion process a whole lot easier. The sheets below have the rating curve for a suppressed weir, and the second sheet converts pressure to actual water depths over the weir boards. Even for thousands of hourly readings, the hourly flow volumes are quickly calculated and are ready to send to the Water Board:

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No Record Of Water Right, Or Split? File Initial Statement

What do you do if your water right has never been recorded with the State Water Resources Control Board? Or, if your property was split from a larger farm or ranch, and you are handling your smaller water right on your own? After all, every water right has to be filed with the Water Board, except most of those that are uniquely listed in Superior Court Decrees. This is true regardless of whether the water right is riparian or appropriative (pre- or post-1914).

You’ll need to file an Initial Statement. These are 4 pages unless cannabis is grown with the water right – that adds page 5. The forms are downloadable, fillable PDFs. If you have your information together and you are handy

**Water Board Initial Statement, Page 1 of 5**

with Google Earth, you might have your form done in a few hours. As with any property description, the better it can be explained, the easier it is to defend your water right if someone has a complaint.

With the Water Board, it’s better if you file before the Water Board comes looking for you. I have not seen folks get fines for filing even when water rights have been used for 50 years, or 100, or even since 1850 (or earlier). The Water Board folks are good to work with and they would much rather that people become compliant with the law, than write nasty letters and issue fines. That may not always be true as regulations get tougher, so get your filing done soon!

How is an Initial Statement different from filing a Water Right Application? An Initial Statement is filed if the water right is already in use. The Water Board is careful to point out that an Initial Statement is not the basis of, nor is it proof for a water right. It is just the way to report if diversion or storage has taken place for some time.

What if your storage or diversion began after 1914, since that is when the Water Board was created and when its authority began? Except for riparian rights, this is a gray area. I think the official answer from most folks at the Water Board is that appropriative water rights after 1914 are only established by a water right application, obtaining a Permit, and hopefully perfecting that Permit into a License.

In reality, there have been many Initial Statements filed for post-1914 water rights. It seems that these stand if there isn’t already a complaint against the filer, and if the water right is not in an already over-appropriated stream where there are obviously more water rights than water. The presence of chinook salmon or steelhead trout might put a post-1914 Initial Statement in question, too.

The problem with filing a Water Right Application is that you have no idea what the outcome may be. It might be denied, or have restrictive conditions imposed, and you won’t know until you have spent some thousands of dollars. Even if your water right is senior to some rights that were filed decades ago, the outcome is unknown. Also, the Water Board folks are extremely busy, and some applications are never completed.

So, many folks take the safe action to protect their water right and comply with the law: they file an Initial Statement. Better to do something not exactly right, or even wrong, than nothing at all.

Reports Of Licensee/Permittee/Stockpond Are Late – Data Worries? File Now And Amend

Have you filed your Report Of Licensee, Progress Report of Permittee, or Report of Stockpond on the Water Board’s web site? 43% of folks have not, according to an email from the Water Board a few minutes ago:

“ANNUAL WATER USE REPORTING FOR 2018

This is a reminder notification for permits, licenses and registrations to file your 2018 Annual Water Diversion report which was due on April 1, 2019. To date, only 57% of appropriative rights have filed on time. …”

What to do? File right away! Call me at (530) 526-0134 (calls are free).

Remember the adage of “Do something wrong instead of nothing right“? It really applies here – folks who get their reports in this week are highly unlikely to see any fines. You can amend your report any time…people are still amending some 2008 reports (11 years later)!

Filing in May, maybe yes, maybe no fines. By July 1, if not a little sooner, the Water Board will have a list of everyone who is going to get fined no matter what, and it’s just a matter of fighting it or paying the lower settlement amount.

Is it not having your storage or flow data ready to file your worry? There are a lot of engineering companies, including mine, that can help you get that done quickly. Processing data can be a big pain, as it was for me over the last few weeks with 50 reports to file. So talk to someone who does it all the time and stop your headaches, get some peace of mind.

Whatever you do, file something now! Fix it later, get help with amendments, call an engineer for help with the data. Incomplete action now is a lot less expensive than $500/day, $15,000/month.

No Trouble Catching Up SB 88 Late & Drought Over

I forgot to mention in my last post on SB 88 compliance, https://allwaterrights.com/2019/02/27/hiding-from-the-water-board-dont-worry-get-compliant/, that you’re still okay if you comply with SB 88 now. The Water Board is not issuing Cease And Desist Orders (CDO) or fines for folks who catch up now, even though it’s late. This is true whether you have yet to install a measurement device, a data logger/recorder, or catch up your Reports Of Licensee or Supplemental Statements. I have seen no adverse action for anyone I know, or clients of other consultants. There are a couple of exceptions here:

You need to catch up before the Water Board contacts you. By that time, you’re probably getting or about to get a CDO with 30 days to comply and report.
If you’re already being contacted, if you received a CDO, if the Water Board is issuing you an Administrative Civil Liability (ACL), if you’re headed to an ACL hearing, then you still need to comply as quickly as possible. Your hassles and fines will not increased, or they may be significantly reduced, and you may still be able to stop the process before you get fined.

I don’t know what may happen in, say, 2020, for folks who have no data for 2018. The same logic applies: get a data logger in and collecting data as soon as possible, and there might be no hassles even for missing data.

Start with a Request For Additional Time. This is quick to fill out and buys you some instant grace. Also, if you had extenuating circumstances like the Carr, Camp, or Mendocino Complex Fires, or other disasters, send an email to Jeff Yeazell, the Water Board’s Public Contact official outside of the Delta. Jeff is very nice, and he is careful to respond back and to keep the emails he gets.

As always, explain in the Remarks and/or other text sections of your Reports Of Licensee or Supplemental Statements anything that helps explain your late compliance, and anything that shows even partial compliance.

And the best news right now is that the drought is over!

Hiding From The Water Board? Don’t Worry, Get Compliant

Are you hiding from the Water Board because your ditch or piped diversion does

Small Ditch In Meadow With No Measurement Device

not yet have a measurement device? Give me a call at (530) 526-0134 – you might find some workable answers in a 15-minute conversation that costs nothing. You want to get on with the important things in your life and business, and my mission is to help you by solving diverters’ headaches to provide peace of mind, and help stay out of trouble.

The installation deadlines were January 1, 2017 through January 1, 2018. Maybe you don’t want any more government oversight because you put up with a lot already. You could be losing sleep over the potential large fines. Or, what if you do install a device, and you worry that you will be in trouble and have to pay fines as soon as you report your new compliance with SB 88? You might not know what needs to be done, and you’re worried it will cost you $15,000, or $20,000, or more.

You might be thinking that the Water Board is plenty busy, and you’re right. The folks there are going through thousands of online forms for Measurement Methods, Alternative Compliance Plans, Reports Of Licensee and Supplemental Statements that have new measurement device information in the blanks, and Requests For Additional Time. My guess is that it could take as long as 5 years before the enforcement staff get out to the most far-flung corners of the State…but it could be as soon as a year, depending on how the to-do pile is sorted.

Diversion Ditch Before Measurement Device Installed

Diversion Dam and Ditch Before Measurement Device Installed

Sure, some measurement devices have to be big to handle large diversions. A direction of 20 cubic feet per second (9,000 gallons per minute) or more may require something like the first two flumes shown below. The Parshall Flume shown below may be a $20,000 installation, but the Watchman Flume might only be an $8,000 installation.

As the diversion size decreases, the size and cost of the measurement device go down, too. There may be a relatively temporary solution, like the pipe and board weir that costs only $1,000 or so including the water level logger if you do it yourself. A larger, more permanent measurement device can be installed later.

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