Start with the water, start with the food, or follow the topics and the policy.
Thanks for visiting the conciseVerbosity Water Explorers Beta! I built these explorers for the people who explain California water: district managers and board members, agency and legislative staff, reporters and communicators. Every water district, groundwater agency, county and crop in the state has its own page, drawn from public data across many sources, so your next briefing starts with the record already in front of you. Start with the question you came with, or use the menu and search bar at the top.
Start from a water or irrigation district and see where it sits, what it grows, how much water it applies, how its groundwater basin is doing, and what supply looks like this season.
- 787 districts, searchable by name, county, groundwater basin, or groundwater agency
- A two-page printable fact sheet for every district
- Reservoir, river, and allocation conditions updated daily
- A page for every major river, reservoir and lake, linked from each district's water sources
Start from a crop and see the counties and growing regions that produce it, the water it takes, the servings it yields, and the districts with it in the ground.
- 226 crops and farm products from the 2022 county crop reports
- A county map shaded by each crop's share of the state's acres
- Every district with the crop mapped, linked to its District Explorer page
Start from a topic and see everything this site holds on it: the tools, the districts and projects where it plays out, the news coverage, the meeting materials and the bills. Follow the topics you work on and your home page keeps them together.
- Surface water, groundwater, natural systems and infrastructure, with more to come
- A story that touches two topics appears under both
- Coverage, meeting materials and bills for registered users; definitions and open tools for everyone
Start from a bill, a rule or an environmental review and follow the record behind it: what is open for comment and when it closes, how the last vote went, who reported lobbying on it, and which committees are holding hearings.
- Water bills in Sacramento and Washington, with votes and committee analyses
- State environmental reviews and federal rules open for comment, with closing dates
- Proceedings pages for registered users
Start from the Central Valley Project or the State Water Project and see who holds contracts with it, what each allocation class received every year, and how reliable each class has been over twenty years. Colorado River contracts stay on the district pages until the Colorado River gets its own project page.
- This year's allocations and the history of every class against the water year type
- How often each contract class was allocated, and took, its full contract
- Every contractor in the registry linked to its District Explorer page
Every groundwater sustainability agency: the plan on file, the state's assessment, the subbasin water budget year by year, and the districts and crops inside.
Open the GSA Explorer →What each of California's 58 counties grows, what its farms earn and employ, and which districts and agencies serve its land.
Open the County Explorer →Every district and groundwater agency in one directory and map, with side-by-side comparison for registered users, and a builder for printable fact sheets.
Open the Portal →Enter an APN or a street address to see the water situation for a single parcel: its district and groundwater agency, the water systems that reach it, the crop mapped on the field, and measured land subsidence.
Sign-in with parcel access Open Parcels →