Walsenburg is surrounded on three sides by beautiful mountains.  On a clear day Pikes Peak projects above the northern horizon.   It's brimming with stunning natural beauty, clear streams, picturesque rock outcroppings and the longest sunset in the central US.  The summers are filled with sunny days and the air is dry.  The winters can be mild enough to play golf year round.    Walsenburg has always been made up of people of the stoutest nature. Diligent, honest, hardworking men and women.  The sort that never complain.  When the wind blows they just grit their teeth and lean into it.  Yes Huerfano County is where history has always been made.  And these are not the sort to shrink back when the world looks lost.  The founding fathers of CERI know because they are of these people.  Spanning back more than 110 years ago, side by side their family swapped sweat and blood with their neighbors.  Together they carved out something for their children and everyone benefited.  Now it's time to do it again.
   As one of our fellow colleagues said.. "The CERI certainly sounds like a potentially worthwhile and ambitious concept. To develop a campus on that scale with as many as 30,000 people living there with a goal of zero or negative carbon footprint would be an amazing accomplishment...... Even if you were able to design the built infrastructure to provide all of its own energy inputs, you would still need to account for the embodied energy in all of the materials used, the energy put into the construction, the housing and food needs for all the workers, etc.   Even so, the project might be worth all of this if the Institute eventually had a sufficiently positive benefit for the world. This would depend on the dedication and vision of those who conceptualize and manifest the plan; I wish you the best in doing this." Kelly Hart, earthbagbuilding.com

CERI's goal is to build not only the leading sustainable living Institute but to create a model Carbon Compensating City .  A city with Carbon Compensating jobs, homes, schools, business and Industry that can be duplicated around the world.
When we finish the ground breaking and move through our first successful year, then all who made it happen can shout a resounding cry to the rest of the world, "If we can do it here?  Then you can do it anywhere!"

                                                                                   That is why Walsenburg.

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