Water and Land Ownership in the Rio Grande Valley
by Ted Sammis

. This game requires a calculator to play and can have a maximum of 24 players. .

Rules of the Game.

1. The flow in the Rio Grande river varies with period of high and low flows . During the 1950 the flow was low and the farmers had to install wells to argument the flow in the river. During the 1975 to present the flow has been high. During the 1900 the flow was average.

A) Start the game by flipping a coin to determine if flow in the river is average or above average during the time period of the game. Head is average flow and tails above average flow. Above average flow is 2 times average flow. Water in above average flow periods is owned by the state.

2. Draw a card labeled 1-24 to determine the time you came to New Mexico to settle the land. The first settlers came 400 years ago but money is valued in 1990 dollars.

3. The state is divided into four areas.

Table 1 Distribution of land in the State of New Mexico

Area	Acres	Cards	Color
Santa Fe and North	60,000 acres	30	red
Albuquerque to Santa Fe	48,000 acres	24	yellow
Socoro area	22,000 acres	11	white
Hatch and Las Cruces	88,000 acres	44	pink
Total	218,000 acres

Rule (1) The first 5 settlers have to be farmers and settle the land. Each settler has to farm enough land to feed 60,000 people. This requires 16,000 ac of land. Land is given by the government in blocks of 2000 ac for homesteading. Each player get 8 cards of land . Each acre of land has 2.5 ac-ft/ac of water rights distributed in blocks of 5000 ac-ft by the government. Request your water rights from the government after acquiring the land. Because there is not a dam on the river you will be given your water in the following proportions

Table 2 Water rights associated with the land

Season	Ac-ft of Water for 16,000 ac. of land	Color	Number of Cards for 16,000 ac. of land	Percent of yearly flow
Oct-Dec	10,000	blue	2	25% of flow
Jan-March	15,000	lavender	3	37.5% of flow
April -June	10,000	white	2	25% of flow
July- Sept	5,000	pink	1	12.5% of flow
Total			8

Total ac-ft of water in the system in a normal flow year is 218,000 ac*2.5 ac-ft/ac = 545,000 ac-ft. One ac-ft of water is 1 ac of land covered to a depth of 1 ft.

Note: You originally will flood irrigate the land to irrigate it and this will require all the water you have. However, the irrigation efficiency of flood irrigation is only 60% so you can invest in irrigation technology and dead level your land to improve your efficiency or convert to sprinkler or trickle irrigation. The water used by the crop is 1.5 ac-ft/ac. If you wish to invest in irrigation technology and sell some of your water rights, calculate the minimum water right you need to farm the land . Drip irrigation systems cost $1000 per ac. Sprinkler system cost $350 per acre and land leveling cost $100 ac every 3 years or 30 ac per year.

Rule (2) Any future settlers can be farmers or city people. Each city person get money ($30,000,000) from the government instead of land but they must buy some water right from the farmers to settle the city. Each city person represents 30,000 people and must buy 200 gal a day for 365 day a year of water rights to move to the city. 1 ac-ft is 325828 gals. Each city person needs 6720 ac-ft of water to live. They should buy the water from the farmers, but if farmers will not sell the water then they can buy it from the state which holds all the excess water in high flow years and can sell it to be stored in a reservoir for average flow years.

Note : Water rights currently cost $5000 for each 1 ac-ft but can be sold for less. Consequently 5000 ac -ft of water cost $25,000,000. Water can also be rented yearly for $200 a year. If you rent water, each year you must pay money to the farmer for the water. You can borrow money from the bank but you must pay interest of 10%. Each year the city people get tax money of $10,000,000 from the bank. The state wants 10,000 an ac.-ft for water.

Rule (3) Play the game till every one has land and water. When the farmers sell water they can sell it during any time of the year. All water owners will eventually have to think about building a dam because the water flow in the river is not distributed correctly through out the year to satisfy demand.

Rule (4) After the land and water has been distributed to each player, start farming the land if you are a farmer or start drinking the water and irrigating the home if you are a city person. Calculate your water needs for Oct.- Dec. and put the water in a pile . Then calculate the water needs for the other periods and put that water in three other piles. If you are a city person and you do not have enough water for one of the periods , try and buy or rent some water. If you are a farmer then you will have to plant less land if you do not have enough water. Farmers must put the land that they do not have enough water to farm in another pile called fallow. Farmers can also borrow money from the bank at 10% interest.

Rule (5) After determining the farm land you can farm, sell the product to the bank. The bank busy produce valued in $1,000,000 increments and land can earn $200 an acre for most crop but $400 an acre for high value onions and lettuce .Determine how many acres you are going to plant to high value crops. The price of high value crops varies because the food is perishable and the price reflects the demand for the food. . Flip a coin to determine the value of the high value crop. Heads $400 an acre, tails $100 an acre

Rule(6) Dams can be built at Elephant Butte to hold all the water for $100,000,000 and at Cochiti for $25,000,000. Water in Cochiti can be stored for use by all people but Elephant Butte water can be used only by the Hatch and Las Cruces area. People in northern New Mexico can make a deal with the farmers in Las Cruces area to store water in Elephant Butte and then they can take water from the river above Elephant Butte but only if the Las Cruces farmers agree. If you want to build a dam determine how much water in any year you have and if the dam will be big enough to store the water. How big will the reservoirs need to be to store two year of flow. Elephant Butte has the possibility of holding 4,000,000 ac-ft of water used in New Mexico. Cochiti dam will hold 500,000 ac-ft. Some water in Elephant Butte stored during high flow belonging to the state must be used for fish and wildlife.

Rule (7) Water requirements of crop are 2.5 ac-ft/ac with graded border irrigation 2.0 ac-ft/ac with dead level irrigation or sprinkler irrigation and 1.5 ac- ft /ac with drip irrigation with none required in Oct -Dec . 10% required in Jan- March, 60% required April- June and 30% required July to Sept

Cost of Irrigation technology is $500 an acre for dead level and sprinkler irrigation and $1000 for drip irrigation.

Bank Accounting Form

Have Fun

Help to run the game for instructor.

1. Set up the money and land in packets before starting the game

2. Put example of Calculation required to determine how much land can be farmed based on water availability through out the year or if you have purchased part in a dam then then total water rights.

3. Hand out instructions a week before playing the game and go over instructions.