Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch

Confirmed. Setting water height to default fixes the issue, but there are more affected references: 0001A276, 0001A277, 0001A278, 0001A27A, 0001A27B, 0001A27F

Looks like HearthFires.esm has the right value, but USSEP restores the unaffected 'old bare game' vanilla value (without any further DLC).

As was noted when this issue was raised on Nexus, the water height value is of no use here since the view of the river and other water outside the walls is determined by cell occlusion, not the water height value.

It has already been checked and determined that updating these values has no effect and that there is only one viewing location inside Whiterun where you can even see over the city walls and it has visible water at that point.

The only other means to be able to see over the walls appears to be to disable collision and get onto a roof of a building or something, at which point you'll notice that there are several things missing from the LOD that would be there if the viewpoint was intended by the game. Water height is not going to do anything for that, and I see no valid reason for us to update the occlusion data for these cells either.

As I posted on Nexus: This is about consistency instead of "if it doesn't matter or not". The other adjacent cells in Whiterun all have Default water height and the principle should be "always use the value of the latest master if it's not wrong".