Regulatory
SGMA, DDW and the annual report
Seven recurring California filings, and the four schema decisions that keep the record ready for them. Waterwell IQ does not fill in or file these reports; it keeps the record they draw on.
California
Your filing calendar, and the record each filing draws on.
The regulatory load in California falls on the agency, not the vendor. Waterwell IQ does not fill in or file these reports. It keeps the record they draw on — by water year, measured and estimated apart — so the numbers come from one place instead of a spring of spreadsheets.
| Due | Filing | What the record holds for it today |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 1 * | Probationary basin extraction report | Monthly extraction for each well over the water year, measured and estimated kept apart, with how each month was measured. |
| Apr 1 | GSP annual report | Extraction by well and month with its measurement method, and water levels with their dates. Totals by sector and storage change are not computed. |
| Apr 1 | Adjudicated basin annual report | The same monthly extraction by well, for you to total the way your watermaster asks. |
| Apr 1 | Electronic annual report | Every source well with its status — active, standby, inactive or destroyed — and its monthly production. |
| Oct 1 | Water loss audit | Source volumes by month and how each was measured. Meter accuracy and calibration dates are not held yet. |
| Rolling | Well completion report | The driller’s log read into the record — construction intervals and lithology — once the report is in hand. The sixty-day clock is not tracked. |
| Rolling | Public records request | A complete export of the district’s record in open formats, with its audit log. Redaction is done outside the platform today. |
* February 1 is the default, not your date. Water Code section 5202 sets an annual extraction report due February 1 for the preceding water year. But when the State Water Board places a basin on probation it sets that basin’s first deadline and first reporting period by order, and both of the basins currently on probation differ from this row. Tule reports 1 January to 31 December 2025; Tulare Lake reports 15 July 2024 to 30 September 2025. Both were due 1 May 2026, and neither period is a water year.
So read this calendar as the general shape of the year, not as your basin’s schedule. Waterwell IQ does not yet hold per-basin filing rules — the due date, reporting period and source for each filing are on the roadmap, not in the product — so confirm your own dates against the State Water Board order for your basin and the DWR guidance for your report. Dates on this page were checked against those sources on 8 September 2026.
Built on the water year. October to September, as a first-class period alongside calendar and fiscal years. It is the most common modeling mistake in groundwater software and it cannot be fixed later.
The state standard, checked on every well. The annular seal on record is checked against the DWR Bulletin 74-90 minimum for the well’s use. Many counties adopted stricter ordinances; those are not loaded yet, so a county’s own minimums still need your check.
Built into the schema
Four decisions that cannot be retrofitted
The water year is a first-class period
October to September, stored on every level and production record. Every California groundwater filing runs on it, and a system built on calendar quarters cannot be converted later without rewriting every aggregate.
Measurements carry an envelope
Not a well, a date and a depth — a depth below a named, dated reference point, with method, stated accuracy and, where there is no reading, an explicit reason. The annual report asks for measurement method and accuracy per volume.
Production is monthly
Probationary basin reporting is monthly per well. You cannot split an annual figure back out afterwards, so monthly is the atomic unit whether or not you currently report at that granularity.
Nothing is ever hard-deleted
A correction supersedes rather than overwrites, because a watermaster may have four years to query a number you already submitted. Retention rules and legal holds sit above all of it.
Records retention, done to the right statute
Independent special districts and cities are governed by different sections of the California Government Code, and the retention engine knows which regime a given agency falls under. Holds for pending litigation, claims and public records requests override every deletion rule, and nothing is deleted by default.
Trustworthy imaging. Write-once storage, cryptographic hashing of every document and an immutable audit trail — the technical conditions your records officer and counsel will look for when deciding whether a digital copy can serve as the record of authority. Whether the original paper may then be destroyed is your agency’s decision under the California Government Code, which requires authorization by your legislative body and turns on the record’s own eligibility, retention schedule and any holds. The platform supports that process; it does not authorize it.
The state standard today, your county next
Every county and water agency had to adopt a well ordinance meeting or exceeding the state standards, and many go stricter — annular seal depth being the classic case. Today the annular seal on record is checked against the DWR Bulletin 74-90 minimum for the well’s use. Each district’s jurisdiction is held in its record, but county ordinances are not loaded yet, so a stricter county minimum still needs your check.
Waterwell IQ produces the data and the exports. It does not give legal advice, and nothing here is a substitute for your own counsel or your GSA’s technical consultant.