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Cal. WAT § 1215.5

This is the official text of Cal. WAT § 1215.5, part of California’s Water Code — governs water rights and water resource management.

Not legal advice. This page reproduces the official text of a government statute for reference only. Laws change, and how a statute applies depends on your specific facts. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Official statutory text

(a) For the purposes of this article, “protected area”, means all of lands which normally drain to the ocean, to a hydraulic sink, or to another state within any of the following, and only the following, river systems:

(1) The Sacramento River System.

(2) The Mokelumne River System.

(3) The Calaveras River System.

(4) The San Joaquin River System.

(5) The Mono Lake System.

(6) The combined Truckee, Walker, and Carson River Systems.

(7) The combined river systems which drain to the ocean from and including the Russian River System northward to the California-Oregon border.

(b) The confluences of the Sacramento, Mokelumne, Calaveras, and San Joaquin River Systems are within the delta, as defined in Section 12220, and the delta shall be considered to be within each of these protected areas.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.