As the air warms and soil is plowed for planting, water master Donnie Stinnett prepares for rice farmers' springtime ritual: flooding the fields with water.

The farmers who belong to the Joint Water Districts Board Stinnett manages about 60 miles north of Sacramento face no drought-related restrictions this year because they have century-old water rights.

In the 1880s, farmers, land developers and investors established them by building canals from the Feather River to nearby fields, said the district's attorney, Paul Minasian.

By 1904, he said, a group of landowners signed an agreement to buy and distribute some of the water from what became known as the Sutter Butte Canal, cementing the right to the water.

The Joint Water Districts Board now operates that same canal for four water districts that inherited the water rights.

When state water officials dammed the river and built Lake Oroville, the districts retained the right to use 555,000 acre-feet in the typical growing season, except in conditions that are more extreme than the current drought 經血過多.

They use the water to irrigate rice, alfalfa, row crops, and fruit and nut orchards. And the flooded rice fields double as habitat for migratory birds success medical co ltd.

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