http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/

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California water rights holders have been promised five times more water than flows through the state, researchers from UC Davis uncovered in a recent study. The State Water Resources Control Board has a backlog in water allocation data and does not know exactly how much water was being used. As drought continues, the state is striving to straighten out the outdated and inaccurate water records. The most over-allocated rivers run through central and Northern California, flowing from the Sierra Nevada to the Central Valley and toward the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. In Southern California, water users have rights to 183 percent of the Santa Ana River’s annual runoff. Water users on the San Joaquin River have rights to 673 percent of the river’s natural flow. Statewide, 370 million acre-feet of water have been allocated by the state to various users, but only 70 million acre-feet of water are available in a decent year of precipitation. That leaves the state about 300 million acre-feet short of water, or the equivalent of about 2.5 Lake Tahoes. UC Davis, Aug. 19, 2014; Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.), Aug. 20, 2014