In 2015, when California was deep into a severe drought, state Senate Bill 88 tightened requirements for reporting water use. This posed a challenge for growers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta’s 415,000 acres of farmland, where many irrigation systems are fed by siphons instead of pumps and so lack electricity to run water meters. Alternative power sources proved troublesome. … So when former Delta Watermaster Michael George suggested that [farmer] Brett Baker look into OpenET, a new online platform that uses satellites to track how much water plants consume, Baker was primed to make it work. That was in 2020. This year marked the launch of an OpenET-based website for reporting water use in the Delta, and 70 percent of growers there have already adopted it.