California's oldest water rights exist only on paper. A new project aims to change that

College students in California have begun scanning 2 million pages of water rights records on paper to make them more easily available in digital form to the public as part of a $60 million project.

The idea is to make it easier to determine who has the right to use water in the state, and from what stream and when, especially in times of drought.

Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd learns more with Erik Ekdahl, deputy director of the California State Water Board’s Division of Water Rights.