Utah Safe Haven Village Project

I closely follow the work of Sterling Allan of Pure Energy Systems. I've discovered recently his association with the Utah Safe Haven Village Project:

Though a primary impetus for starting the community is to prepare for societal meltdown in the United States, those involved in the community look at this more as an opportunity to finally live the way they've been dreaming and talking for years. In other words, this is not an interim, transient condition, but it is to be a model for more enlightened living, both with the land and with each other. The community will aim to be off-grid as much as possible using sustainable techniques.

Regarding Allan's association with the project:

His home in Eagle Mountain, which was sold on Oct. 28, 2009, was rolled over via a 1031 exchange to help secure the land for the community, as well as for some building materials for a replacement home in the community, relying on the community to provide labor for the balance of the value.

This YouTube video is about the project:



I find this very inspirational.

I'm trying to find up-to-date information.

I see this entry on the website page I cited:

In the News

Communities > Safe Haven Villages >
We made it to 'Best Places to Live Off the Grid' - Our intentional community project, Safe Haven Villages, is being featured at MSN as one of ten "Best Places to Live Off the Grid". I think it was our mention of "wanting to power the community with something more exotic than just solar or wind, such as cold fusion" that got us on that list, even though we don't have any official dwellings yet. (MSN; December 26, 2011)

I'll be looking for more news since December 2011.

I have often thought how wonderful it would be to "go back" and live in a time where there was no money, people took responsibility for their own actions and everyone worked towards a common goal

I will be following this as well

I find it unfriendly to the environment. In fact, I can see them doing a great deal of damage to the environment, and it isn't practical, and they can't sustain living there; anyone who has lived in the desert knows this.

In the first place they are living in the desert, there is no water around them. You have to have water to live and grow food, and they can't possibly grow enough food to sustain their living there.

Next, they are burning up all of the wood in the area. First they will pick up the dead limbs laying around and burn them (these dead limbs were the homes of critters), but pretty soon they will be burning up all of the living wood to heat up their food.

The whole idea is nothing but a bad joke on anyone who believes they are friendly to the environment and can sustain living in an area with no water.

From a Deseret News article about the project:

Utahns creating a sustainable, off grid community

By Gina Barker, Deseret News
Published: Friday, Aug. 13 2010 12:33 a.m. MDT

SPRING CITY, Sanpete County — Heaving the flat slate stones into place along a low wall, James Torgersen seems comfortable in the wilder reaches of Sanpete County.

. . . Safe Haven founders will have to convince Sanpete County officials that non-traditional amenities like dry mulch toilets are safe alternatives to septic tanks, and they'll need to come up with enough money to buy the necessary water rights for the 18-home project they envision.

In the meantime, they're buying water rights for four homes and waiting to present a minor subdivision plan for the project's first phase. And they've been hard at work building the structures that don't require permits.

"This is an evolving project," said community member Sterling Allan. "We're trying to do as much as we can now."

The goal for the community is much larger than that. Torgersen hopes to incorporate as many sustainable techniques into the community plans as possible. Whether it's collecting rainwater, building greenhouses or using solar energy, Torgersen hopes to turn the wild property into a place where people can come to practice total self-sustainability.

. . . "People like me research the building codes and find out how to do things the right way," Torgersen said. "We can build all these legally."

The system isn't meant to support sustainable living practices, he said. Even freely collecting rainwater wasn't possible until July 1 under Utah law.

Now, Safe Haven residents will have to convince state and county officials that filtering the water with sand and charcoal is acceptable.

The Allans and Torgersen are hoping to change the way legislators and Americans think about modern life and what is sustainable.

"Let's simplify," Torgersen said. "We've gotten way too complicated."

looks like yet another commune from the 60's updated a little ... poor planning to start with bad location for a community ... cant quite put a finger on it ... but smell a scam in progress ....

reply to post by Mary Rose


Thanks for your interest in our SafeHavenVillages.org... project.

It definitely has been an interesting ride so far.

We got our well dug a couple of years ago. Don't have any homes built yet. Have a couple of earth-based sheds largely done. While being literally dirt-cheap, they are very labor-intensive to build.

The GrowUtahFirst.com... project that has been leasing part of the land to build some peswiki.com...:Walipini_Underground_Greenhouses structures has had people living on the land in the last two summers, but has yet to complete a structure.

The dynamics of the community are something you would find in a reality series; and in fact, we have a reality show that may do a few segments on our project.

Good thing things haven't fallen apart yet. We're not even close to being ready.

reply to post by sterlingda


You must be Sterling D. Allan himself.

Originally posted by sterlingda
The dynamics of the community are something you would find in a reality series; and in fact, we have a reality show that may do a few segments on our project.

I can imagine. Nothing is more challenging than dealing with human nature.

I have a question about your shed.



Due to associations with reptilians and the Illuminati, I'm wondering why a dragon was chosen for decoration for the shed?

reply to post by Mary Rose


You have to remember that all things have opposites. Yin/Yang. For every negative meaning, there is a positive opposite, and vice versa. I lived an example of that a few years back. The address for my house was 666 S.

Take the word "cleave." We are to cleave or adhere to our spouse and none other. Yet the word "cleave" also means to utterly separate, as in cleaver.

Sterling

I love the concept of this, and we have a few places like this in the UK, that have been in existence for decades. They are recognized and respected.

I don't think the communes here in the UK have the same motivations though, they are primarily intended to be ecologically minded communities, rather than survivalist in any way. But I guess some of them must be thinking that way now that our country is in the s**t storm it's in.

I would love to be involved in a project like this, simply because I believe that we need to get back to smaller communities, where people are responsible for each other and have a stake in the success of the group. That is genuine community IMO.

Good for them in getting things started. I can't really comment on the suitability of the location and so on, but it's always good to see people trying new things and building new communities like this. I am jealous!

Originally posted by detachedindividual
I would love to be involved in a project like this, simply because I believe that we need to get back to smaller communities, where people are responsible for each other and have a stake in the success of the group. That is genuine community IMO.

Me, too. But one thing I would need to be insured of is to have privacy and private property at the same time. Is that contradictory?

Originally posted by RussianScientists
I find it unfriendly to the environment. In fact, I can see them doing a great deal of damage to the environment, and it isn't practical, and they can't sustain living there; anyone who has lived in the desert knows this.

In the first place they are living in the desert, there is no water around them. You have to have water to live and grow food, and they can't possibly grow enough food to sustain their living there.

Next, they are burning up all of the wood in the area. First they will pick up the dead limbs laying around and burn them (these dead limbs were the homes of critters), but pretty soon they will be burning up all of the living wood to heat up their food.

The whole idea is nothing but a bad joke on anyone who believes they are friendly to the environment and can sustain living in an area with no water.

Ever hear of survival techniques to collect water in the desert? There are plenty of good techniques that will make very much water as long as the sun shines. Ever hear of solar ovens? Food heating or cooking is not a problem. Your really a Russian scientists? What are they teaching you guys? I think you need to get your money back for your degree.

Sterlingda. what about communications or computers/Internet to get up to date information on the outside world - not to mention the resources from the internet you could have to help build and improve your community? Will you have those, if so, how will you power those? What about if not a live connection, a database of collected information of these types, that you perhaps update from time to time from an internet connection that's outside the community?

You know we have a survival forum here and many of us will take solar powered laptops with data bases of info with us if we have a SHTF situation.

I am very interested in how you guys create all your energy needs and the technology you will use.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
Ever hear of survival techniques to collect water in the desert? There are plenty of good techniques that will make very much water as long as the sun shines.

Can you give us some more information on that?

Originally posted by Mary Rose

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
Ever hear of survival techniques to collect water in the desert? There are plenty of good techniques that will make very much water as long as the sun shines.

Can you give us some more information on that?

a solar still. used to collect water by use of the suns hot rays. water is drinkable.

edit. and the green foliage isnt needed it just speeds the collection rate. if you dig "deep enough" to reach moist soil it will collect without the foliage.

reply to post by Dizrael


Thanks!

I see the source is HowStuffWorks. Here's their article "How to Find Water in the Wild" but it's not the one that includes your image. Can you link to it?

reply to post by Dizrael


Thanks Dizrael, I missed her question.

People talk about these techniques in the Survival forum all the time. Watching many of the popular survival tv shows will instruct you on more of them. Shows like Man vs Wild, Man Woman Wild, Dual Survival etc. As long as the sun shines and there is humidity in the air you can collect water - both by day and night. By day because the sun acts as a direct heat source and by night because of the heat rising off of the Earth that the sun had heated up during the day. Both work by condensation. In the wide open spaces in the desert you can make many large solar stills or collect morning dew from trees and brush, enough to gather many gallons of water a day.

Finding water in the desert: crisistimes.com...
Wilderness Survival: Water procurement: www.wilderness-survival.net...

Dizrael's picture above came from here, the second page in that How To: adventure.howstuffworks.com...

Still watching this thread. I hope sterlingda comes back and replies to my post.

Mary.. do you know of other sources of information for this project?

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Sorry, no, I don't.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I keep my links for such things here: http://(link tracking not allowed)/R13Buq

There are satellite-based Internet providers who are likely to stay going when TSHTF.

For our power, we hope that by the time we build, there will be a more Exotic Free Energy technology than solar or wind. I track the best ones I know of at Top5Energy.com...

Sterling