The Sacramento Bee (August 23, 2014) - On average, rain and snow storms drop about 200 million acre-feet of water on California each year – 65 trillion gallons of the life-giving liquid. Last week, two University of California researchers published a study finding that just since 1914, California has allocated water rights equal to five times the 70 million acre-feet of annual runoff from precipitation, mostly to federal, state and local government water agencies, and about nine times current diversions. The study implies that our structure of water rights is completely nonsensical, particularly since, as it notes, the Water Resources Board, which supposedly regulates supply, has absolutely no idea who is taking what under those rights.