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Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Majes-Colca watershed in Peru, this article explores some of the questions posed by Wittfogel regarding the management of hydraulic infrastructure and its effects on social relationships, by focusing on the practices of the 'hydraulic bureaucracy' in Peru. The author argues that although a hydraulic bureaucracy developed after the nationalization of water and the construction of the Majes Irrigation Project, the engineers working in Majes-Colca do not constitute a despotic elite detached from the water users. Practices of water regulation are entangled in social life and cultural values, and engineers are differentiated in hierarchies based on geography and social background. The author suggests that the regulations are performed in hydrosocial networks, and the distribution of water is an issue of negotiations and struggles. The engineers are constantly balancing and negotiating the requirements of impersonal rationality and efficacy, and the social obligations of relatedness and reciprocity. These balancing acts also contribute to the reproduction of asymmetric power relations and the everyday processes of state formation.