About the data

Everything on this map is copied from public water-right records that state agencies publish. No record is written, scored or edited by hand here, and there is no staff reviewing them: if a state's data has a wrong owner or a point in the wrong place, this site has it too. Nothing is paid placement.

A script reads each state's published service once a week, reshapes every state into one common format, and publishes the result as the map and the record pages. The counts below are rights, after dropping records the state itself marks as ended; a right with several points of diversion counts once.

Owner names and privacy

Owners of record are public information in every state here and appear on each right's page, because “whose right is this” is usually the first question. They are kept out of page titles and search snippets, there is no search by owner name, and mailing or street addresses are never republished, even where a state's dataset includes them. To ask for a correction, use the contact form; the state's own record is what gets corrected first.

Not legal advice

A point on the map is where a record says water is diverted. It does not show where the water is used, whether the right is being exercised, or which parcel it belongs to, and none of it replaces the official record or a title search. Before buying land or relying on a right, get the record from the agency and advice from a water-rights attorney.