LostCoastOutpost.com (September 5, 2014) - Just northwest of Fortuna, the Lower Eel River seems to disappear. The Associated Press recently explored the flaws in California’s system, finding that thousands of senior rights holders use trillions of gallons of water every day, for free, and with very little oversight. If you care to really dig into our state’s messed up water rights system, check out this study recently produced by researchers the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Merced.