California Department of Water Resources
Research Guide
About the Department of Water Resources
History
Several agencies were responsible for water in California before the Department of Water Resources (DWR) was created. The Office of the State Engineer was created in 1878, and the first State Engineer, William Hammond Hall, did extensive studies on possibilities for altering waterways for irrigation, navigation, and flood control.
Later, these duties passed to the Division of Water Resources within the Department of Public Works. However, the ever-growing importance of water management in California suggested that it might be best handled at the department level. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) was established in 1956 to protect and manage California’s water supply.
Duties
One of DWR’s major responsibilities is the State Water Project, which consists of over 700 miles of canals, tunnels, and pipes carrying water from Northern California to Southern California. Besides supplying water to farms and people, it provides hydroelectric power and recreation. DWR also regulates dams, manages water and habitat conservation efforts such as the restoration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, provides flood protection, conducts research, and educates the public about protecting water quality and supply.
Finding Water Resources Publications
DWR Publications in our Catalog
You can find Department of Water Resources publications in the California State Library’s online catalog. In the advanced search, select “Author/Creator” and type in “California water resources” (without quotation marks).
If you are searching for a particular document, you can select “Title” and “contains” from the drop-down menus for the next search box and enter important words from the title.
You can also add keywords or controlled subject terms to find DWR documents on specific topics, or narrow by date or material type.
DWR Publications Online
You can explore the Department of Water Resources website. In addition, you can copy and paste the agency website URL into the Wayback Machine to see archived versions of the website as it appeared in the past. This is a great way to find older documents, agency news announcements, and more which may have only appeared on the website for short periods of time.
What about unpublished, internal agency documents? The California State Archives holds records from the Department of Water Resources as well as the earlier Division of Water Resources, the State Engineer, and California’s first State Engineer, William Hammond Hall. Explore their holdings through their online catalog, Minerva.
Sometimes, agency documents end up held by other institutions. Search the Online Archive of California for these elusive caches. Interesting finds include photographs of the State Water Project and an oral history of the DWR, held by UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library; papers of former DWR directors and other employees, held by UC Riverside’s Water Resources Collections and Archives; and papers and photographs produced by William Hammond Hall, held by the California Historical Society.
To find even more documents, you can search the holdings of thousands of libraries at once through WorldCat. This can help you locate documents in libraries around the world, many of which are not digitized. WorldCat also links to digitized documents hosted on HathiTrust, the Internet Archive, and other platforms.
Notable and Interesting Water Resources Publications
California. Office of State Engineer. Report of the State Engineer to His Excellency R.W. Waterman, Governor of California. For the Year and a Half ending December 31, 1888. Sacramento : J.D. Young, Supt. State Printing, 1888.
California Water Plan Update 2018 : Managing Water Resources for Sustainability. [Sacramento, California] : State of California, The Natural Resources Agency, Department of Water Resources, June 2019.
California’s Amazing Delta [book cover]. [Sacramento, California] : California Natural Resources Agency : printing provided by California State Water Resources and State Water Contractors, September 3, 2010.
Jones, Jeanine. California’s Most Significant Droughts : Comparing Historical and Recent Conditions. Sacramento, California : California Department of Water Resources, January 2020.