“Welcome to Voices of Taos. My name is Laura Martin-Baseman, and I’m the producer of this podcast from The Taos News. Every week, we will be bringing you a voice from our Taos community.

Welcome to Voices of Taos. I’m Geoffrey Plant, Deputy Editor of The Taos News. And our guest today is Jonah Reynolds.

Jonah is behind the Pangea Community development that is planned in Upper Las Colonias on the Tarleton Ranch where last year and actually for the past six years, a development, the Tarleton Ranch Eco-Village, had been planned. The Tarleton Ranch Eco-Village, which colloquially is known as the TREV, was kind of scuttled after the neighbors in the area and other stakeholders. And really from across Taos County, there was just a sizable protest.

Taos Pueblo indicated its opposition to it at the last minute. And last year and earlier this year, that project kind of, it died. And Jonah Reynolds has managed to acquire, or he’s in the midst of acquiring the 330-acre parcel that once was the Tarleton Ranch from the Tarleton family.

And he’s joining us here today to talk about the Pangea Community. Welcome, Jonah.”

“Yes, Sarah, thank you for having me.

And so what, let’s just jump right in here. What is different from the Tarleton Ranch ecovillage that the Pangea Community is doing? Why is it a better proposal?

Why is it actually an ecovillage, so to speak? And really, what is different about this proposal?

Right, so it is about a third less buildings. We’re looking at about 111. Electricity is completely off-grid.

Catch water is about 80% off-grid. We’re treating all of our own wastewater on-site at each building. So it’s a much lower impact, way more sensitive and regenerative and sustainable.

And when you say catch water, you’re talking about water catchment, kind of like the Greater World Community, Earthship Community uses?

Yes, yeah. We catch all the water or most of it from the sky, run it through filters, make it into potable water and typical household supply.”

“And so, are these buildings going to look like Earthships? I mean, most of our listeners probably know that you’re the son of Mike Reynolds, the originator of the Earthship. But when we’ve spoken previously, you mentioned how a lot of your work is more what you call traditional building forms.

What does that mean?

So, yeah, some of the buildings might look like Earthships. It depends on what clients want. But the vast majority of our clients want all the off-grid living systems, but they want it to look like a completely conventional building and have those conventional layouts.

So that’s what we’re doing.

And the Tarleton Ranch Eco-Village had a component that was quite a large commercial district, mostly close to New Mexico 150. And for folks who don’t know where Upper Las Colonias is, it’s between New Mexico 522 and New Mexico 150, between El Prado and Des Montes. That commercial district was not only dense, included a hotel, well, proposals for a hotel, a bank, a spa.”

“The list really went on and on and was, I believe, up to three stories, maybe more. And that was an issue that many neighbors up there and the pueblo were concerned about. This Pangea Community also has a commercial district.

Tell us what you envision for that.

No buildings above two levels. There’s only two buildings that are going to be two levels. We can also sink these buildings down a little bit because the viewshed from the east is very, very important.

Viewshed from all directions is very important. There is a commercial part. There’s a certain amount of lots planned.

We are looking at doing markets, cafe, schools. One hotel, the second one is more like a Taos Casita hotel. You know, commercial thing.

We are looking at doing a spa and healing center. So it is important in a community of this size to have a commercial part. So it’s not only residential buildings.

You know, we want to produce all the food the community is going to use in the community and have a market for that.

Let’s talk more about that food production part.”

“So this community is designed all around the two of many crises that are happening now in Taos County, as well as all over the country and the world, really. Affordable housing and food production. So through the gray water planters and the contained black water botanical cells, there’s a lot of really good water that happens out of that treated gray water, which plants love.

Production goes through the roof. So inside of what we call earthship wallopinis, which are greenhouses sunken into the ground with all these off-grid living systems, and then regenerative microfarming with this gray water, we’re expecting to produce massive, massive amounts of food for the community. We want to give a portion of it to those who are most needy.

For example, I see the church in El Prado has people line up and food’s given away there. Food’s given away at the Division of Natural Resources on the Pueblo. So we’re designing everything around those two things, affordable housing and food production.”

“And let’s drill down on the affordable housing and workforce housing components of this. I think readers of the Taos News a few weeks ago, when this news broke about the Pangea Community, we’re surprised to hear $500 monthly affordable housing rentals, and that’s something that you’ve really committed to. Can you sort of give us a picture of what that looks like, and who are those renters in your mind?

Well, a rising tide raises all ships. You got to start with the most needy. Nothing else can happen without at least making an effort there.

So we’re looking at doing about 108 affordable housing units at final buildout on this community. When you do affordable housing that is sustainable, off-grid regenerative, which in our opinion is the only way to do it, you can have no utility bills, because everything’s off-grid, but the building will be warm in the winter. It’ll always have electricity and water and wastewater treatment, and the people living there don’t have that stress struggle of worrying about holding down two or three jobs to pay the utility, right?”

“The house takes care of them. And the price point is from a lot of conversations and research of what is absolutely realistic for people who are couch surfing and homeless. That’s where we’re starting.

Yeah.

The idea of them buying a house and putting down 30, 50 grand or whatever, dealing with the paperwork, it’s just not realistic. It’s not going to happen. So $500 a month, first and last, they’re in.

It’s a roughly hotel-sized thing, 350 to 400 square feet, they’re in. They can graduate up and buy that one. They can graduate up into a workforce thing that’s about 700, 800 square feet.

And the point is not to be homeless and drop that stress struggle. And then we have the Urship Wallopini Greenhouses and Growing Food, which is really good for the soul to just do that. So that’s the goal, and those are some of the details that are there.

And everything about the community is designed to support those two things.

Yeah. And there is a component that is what’s known as market-rate housing. So that would be homes that are sold for the price they can get.”

“Can you talk about those? What do those look like?

Well, it’s all attached. It’s all integrated, like the off-grade living systems are. So you can’t do just a development of only affordable housing.

The money just doesn’t work. There is no money in it. There’s no profit.

And so the food production, the commercial stuff, the biodiesel, the workforce housing, the market housing all support that. It makes it happen. It helps it happen.

So the workforce, we have a different definition of what the state defines as workforce. It’s more like a spectrum. Basically, our prices, if you can call it that, are less than what the state defines.

Same thing, obviously, on affordable. And then the market value are just larger homes. They’re probably nicer, cost more.

And so part of it is we want to have an inclusive community where everyone is welcome. And we’re all helping and supporting each other, you know, together we’re strong.”

“Yeah, you really do envision this as a community. I think some of the complaints about TREV were that it was going to be a small city. And that does sound like a community, but what you’re talking about is folks who might live and work in this community, right?

And schools, too. There’s a couple of schools proposed.

Yeah, there’s two schools, young kids, middle age, middle school, I guess you can call it. And so, it’s not just sustainable and off-grid and regenerative when we’re looking at building design and systems. It’s the way we treat each other.

It’s the way we cohabitate together. It’s the way we’re all hanging out together. And so, when you can live and work in the same area and walk to work on potentially this parcel of land, the embodied energy of everything goes down and everyone becomes just happier, more successful, and nicer to each other.

And that’s really the goal.”

“Before we go to our break here, let’s just go around the community a little more and kind of close that circle. What other components to this project are important for folks to know just in the, you know, about a minute and 30 seconds?

Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s the food production everywhere. 18 years ago, we, here in Taos, we did a biodiesel company.

It supplied the chili line and all that. So we want to do that again on here.

And what does that mean, biodiesel? What would that be used for?

Well, basically, we collect the waste vegetable oil from restaurants, break it, glycerin goes one way, and we have biodiesel, which is a direct replacement for petroleum diesel. It keeps money in Taos and it’s a local fuel. It’s much better for the engines.

So this is a production facility?

Yeah, a small one.

I see.

Yeah, very small one.

What else is in the Pangea Community?

Well, the different types of homes, the affordables, the workforce and the market value. There’s the schools, two of them. There’s a cafe and a restaurant.”

“There’s, we’re looking at having a fire department out there because it’s my understanding that the whole area needs one. And then, you know, places for office, maybe a post office, a visitor center. And we’re looking, there’s a gravel pit there, a small amphitheater, nothing loud like when we do the solar music festival in 97, 98.

Nothing on that level. A spa and healing center. We’re talking to some doctors who want to live and work.

And the whole thing about how there used to be house calls with doctors, which is really nice. A cultural center. So all of the beautiful cultures here can get together and learn from each other.

A place for tourists to get into the hotel and the cultural center and learn from each other.

The physicians you mentioned, that makes me think that there is a, there’s a senior housing component to this as well, right?

Yes. Yeah, thank you. There’s a number of affordable housing earmarked to seniors, 48 units actually.”

“And that came up from a couple of meetings last year. You know, I was just looking at affordable housing and the point was made, well, the seniors need it. So we’re dedicating some specifically for seniors.

And then another criticism of the TREV before we go to our break was that once these permits they were applying for, which ultimately were denied, were they to be approved, folks were skeptical that the development would take shape exactly as it was, you know, proposed and pitched to the county and to the communities. There was sort of this sense that, how do we know what the developers are really going to do? What do you say when people ask you that question?

Well, we’re the designers, builders and developers, but we do plan on working with all the designers and builders here. I’m maintaining absolute control top to bottom. It’s the only way right now I can guarantee that things will happen consciously or right.

But that being said, there’s the articles, there’s the bylaws and there’s the HOA. Those things will lock everything down forever so that this vision won’t change 30, 40, 50 years later.”

“All right. Well, we’re going to take a break. We’ll be back with Jonah Reynolds and discussing the Pangea Community in just a moment.”

“nd we’re back speaking with Jonah Reynolds, who is going to develop the Pangea Community in Upper Las Colonias here just north of Taos. Jonah, I wanted to talk about your background, how you got into developing sustainable buildings. Where does that come from?

What inspired you to do this kind of work?

Well, I was kind of born into it. My father started Earthships with a large group of people. And in early on 12, 13, or somewhere in there, I was like, this is something.

This can help people, which just really spoke to me. So I dove right in, and here we are today.

And give us some examples of other projects. I think when we’ve spoken previously, you noted that this is the largest scale project that you’re undertaking. But what are some of the home builds or developments that you’ve done in the past?

Well, we’ve been doing sustainable off-grid buildings for decades. I’ve been doing it about 37 years. You know, came up with my father’s company.”

“We did the Greater World Community on 640 acres, a 55-acre thing up above Valdez and the mountains there. And been doing these types of buildings all over the world for clients for all these decades, evolving each building, getting it so that it works in any climate, and it lends itself very well to disaster relief. So through all that, we just keep going.

And lately, we’ve always had people ask, when are you going to do the next community? Every building we do, we pour everything we know into it. And we were looking around, and then I found out about TREV, and here we are.

And what kind of person is looking for a home that at least has the capability to be off-grid? I think there’s a distinction between what you do and at least the original Earthship concept, in that not only are these more traditional-looking quite often, but your clients, I think you told me, they want to be able to live off-grid. There’s sort of a, we know about Apocalypse Creep.”

“Folks are concerned about, you know, breakdown of services, of basic services, that kind of thing. Who is, who are your clients that are looking for these kinds of homes?

It’s really everybody. It’s the extreme left and the extreme right, everyone in between. Everyone has their different angles.

Some are, yeah, the prepper type, some are just want to be independent. I’ve seen it all, all across the board, and we appeal to everyone. This is not, at least at first, about the environment.

This is about being conscious and logical and doing the right thing. That’s a beautiful result, that we get to help save the planet or whatever like that. So it’s really everyone.

Everyone has all their own angles. They want to get away. It’s a talking point for some people.

They want to prep. They want to be independent. They want to make their family safe.

They want to make their community safe. There’s a long list of reasons.”

“And so the Pangea Community, which, again, is a little over 100 buildings total, including commercial dwellings for people, schools, that is going to have some basic infrastructure in it, right? Like, I know you mentioned a fire department. But does this neighborhood have, you know, curb and gutter, water sewer capability or any of that stuff?

Like, what’s the distinction between a sort of a regular subdivision and Pangea when it comes to utilities and infrastructure?

We don’t believe in infrastructure. It breaks. It becomes obsolete.

If the infrastructure breaks, everyone, every building on that infrastructure is susceptible. So the idea is each building takes care of itself. So in this community, roads are considered an infrastructure thing.

And we want to keep everything as low impact and minimal as possible. So hopefully I’m not hearing anything that will need to pave anything. But, you know, solar lights that have very low spectrum, so I don’t know, 100 yards away, you can’t even see it.

Curbs and things like that, I hope not.

Less hardscape. You want to…

Mellow…

.use, let the water go into the ground, not just run off.”

“There’s permaculture principles. Right. So everything about the community now fits into the existing county and neighborhood association zones.

We’re not asking for any variances. And that’s very important. So whatever the regulations require at the most minimal for roads, that’s what we have to do.

You know, we want to do by, you know, biking and bring the bus line in and all that. But other than that, there’s really, there is no infrastructure. You know, everything is off grid.

The only thing is water is I can’t predict how much water is coming out of the sky each year. This last winter was dry two, three years ago. It was wet.

And then I also can’t control how much water people use. I can set up boundaries. So therefore, and with the whole point of making safe the people, we’ll probably have a well two, maybe three at the most as that backup.

So then there might be some lines to buildings for that.

Yeah. Okay. And then solar energy is the power source for this community.

Is that right?”

“Each building takes care of itself. So we’re not powering the community, we’re powering each building on its own. Wind, maybe, but it breaks and it’s a bit of an eyesore because it has moving parts, it breaks.

But I’m sure we’re going to do some micro hydro because there’s a creek there that runs.

There’s also an ASECIA that runs through there and that’s probably something we should address. I was interested to learn at a community stakeholder meeting that you held several weeks ago, that you do have the water rights that go with that property, but you won’t be accessing the ASECIA. Why is that?

Well, I’m not seeing that we’re going to need it. There’s plenty of water that’s coming out of the sky. We recycle gray water like we were talking earlier.

So I’m hoping not to need it. I’m not seeing any reason why we would need it. And that leads to a very, very important point, which is we must support our small farmers and ranchers, and they’re hurting for water.

So that should go to the farmers and ranchers.

Downstream.

Yeah, or on property.”

“And another thing I wanted to circle back to with the community itself is how you’re going to construct this. You’re planning to use, you mentioned biodiesel earlier. You’re planning to power equipment with biodiesel.

I think this will be the first, at least, development of this scale to use 3D printing technology to make building forms. Tell us about that.

It’s amazing. It’s a complete game changer. It makes everything way more affordable and faster.

There are some other developments in communities, Texas, Florida, who are 3D printing with cement. And then those walls are filled with insulation, bat insulation. It just makes them just like stick frame housing.

So I’m, to be honest, not really impressed with it. We are in the process of bringing in a printer with a company called Cobod, and it prints with concrete. It basically gives me my thermal mass, which is the equivalent of the rammed earth and tires.”

“You know, thermal mass holds temperature like Adobe’s, which is the original sustainable building thing for thousands of years. And I can do about a thousand square feet in a week with a 3D printer. So it essentially levels the playing field for us, because we’ve always been about 10, maybe 15 percent more expensive than a conventional building.

It depends on finishes and all that. But you get the off-grid living systems. This is as fast, if not faster, and time is money.

And it also gives us a completely conventional building, because I end up with a concrete wall reinforced with steel and engineering fibers. So California opens wide up. You know, New Mexico, we’re familiar.

Getting a permit for a ownership is not a problem, or any off-grid building.

Oh, this is an interesting point.

Yeah, it’s very important. So to be general, it clears everything out for sustainable regenerative off-grid buildings that are 3D printed to be faster, better, more affordable than conventional stick frame nonsense.”

“And what, for those of us who aren’t builders, what does a thousand square feet a week mean? Like what’s that compared to constructing non-3D printed Pangea buildings or a traditional structure?

So what we’ve been building for decades is rammed earth, rammed earth and tires. That takes a long time. A thousand square feet could be four weeks, five, you know, somewhere in there, depending.

Pounding dirt is incredibly time consuming, right?

It can be, it can be. It’s one of my favorite things to do next to basketball. But it’s also the heating cooling system.

Dirt and tires are literally everywhere on this planet. It is an amazing, effective thing, but it’s still very weird. And people just can’t grasp it and tires and all that.

So it’s still pretty much the top choice, but 3D printing is faster, easier. You know, when you’re printing something on your desk, a piece of paper, you don’t do anything. You try and prevent it from getting clogged.”

“Well, it’s the same thing with the 3D printer. It accepts the CAD software directly. You sit back, the walls go up, the conduit and the plumbing, you kind of got a hold as it comes through on its layers.

They’re printed in place.

The house is printed in place on site. So it looks like a rock concert stage, the printer, as we unfold it out of a 40-foot shipping container, which is interesting because then I can drop that container anywhere in the world. Disaster relief, right?

Which is very important to be fast and strong and normal, conventional. People, humans don’t like change or weird, different things. So it’s a complete game changer and it can run on solar and it can run on biodiesel.

And so what are the next steps for Pangea Community? Where I know you’re going to have to go through a permitting process probably with the county. What’s the timeline?

What’s going to happen next year?”

“Well it’s very important that we identified the pathway to permits months ago and so now we’ve started that process on permits for buildings and permits for summary subdivisions. Because that’s how we’re getting approval instead of one giant thing, which administratively is a lot and it’s just not appropriate to do something so big. It’s better all around for the people, for everyone, that they’re split up into bite-sized chunks, so to speak.

What is the first bite-sized chunk?

It’s a couple summary subdivisions made up of five lots. And again, we’re fitting everything into existing codes and regulations. So that exists.

And so it’s five lots in there and, of course, buildings on there. So we’ve started that. It’s going to take a while.

I want to start building yesterday because, getting back to what we were first talking about, affordable housing and food, its words can’t describe it. It’s just crazy, tough, and insane.

It’s a crisis.

It is. But you have the winter when it’s freezing. And so I’m trying to get buildings online at 500 a month before the freeze next winter.”

“Wow. We’re about to wrap this show up, but I wanted to get some more next steps. I think there’s already been a couple community meetings, and there’s some coming up as well.

Tell us where folks can get engaged, including online and in-person with the Pangea Community. Get questions answered. People have asked me while reporting on it, how do I get in line for one of these affordable housing units?

Tell us about that sort of thing, the meetings, the website, and such.

Yeah. We got a pretty simple to remember web address, a domain, taoscommunity.org, and we have everything on our website. It’s very important that we meet with people, groups, families, and so we’re doing public meetings.

The next one is Saturday, March 1st at the Wildflower Playhouse from 1 to 3, and all this is at taoscommunity.org. And then the one after that is March 8th at the TCA from 1 to 3. So I’m hoping everyone can go, but you can also send us an email through the website.”

“We’re replying to as many as we can. There’s a long list of people who want to get into the community, specifically the affordables. And like I said, that’s what I’m trying to get online first.

But that’s how people can get involved and comment and tell us what they think and we’re integrating everything. And that’s how people can get with us about living on the community.

And before we go, I mentioned at the top of the show that Taos Pueblo really sort of last minute said, hey, we weren’t consulted about the Tarleton Ranch Eco-Village development. And I think it’s fair to say that had at least something to do with the project permits denial. What is your communication with Taos Pueblo with regard to the Pangea Community, which for listeners who don’t know, is directly across New Mexico 150 from Taos Pueblo land?

Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s we have a little poster thing of primary concerns. That’s obviously one of them concerns that the community has raised. And so that is absolutely absolutely critically important is to get that advice, guidance, council.”

“And so right now, we had a meeting, I think it was a week ago before the first one on at Royal Seco Community Center. And that was canceled for my understanding, two reasons, one during January and February. These are religious months.

This was the meeting that was supposed to be sort of Pueblo oriented?

Yeah, yeah, we planned for the first meeting to be for tribal members only. And I’ve been meeting with tribal families. I met with the government last year, one meeting, again, to seek that guidance and advice and council about, like, how can we do this?

What am I missing kind of a thing? And, you know, there’s a different government each year and different process. So we had the first meeting specifically for tribal members that was canceled, to my understanding, because of religious things during January and February.”

“I did meet briefly with the new tribal secretary, and hopefully we’ll hear back, I think, March, after the two religious months, again, to my understanding. And there’s also a process that I understand, that we need to meet with the tribal government and get approval to have that type of meeting for tribal members only.

All right. Well, Jonah Reynolds, thank you so much for joining us on Voices of Taos today. This has been a fascinating discussion, and I’m going to forecast that we’ll probably be having you back on the show to talk about this project.

Again, the Pangea Community in the next couple of years, to say the least. Thank you, Jonah.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us for Voices of Taos, a podcast by The Taos News produced by Laura Martin Basement. Our music was produced and arranged by Miles Bonny, featuring musicians Francisco Velarde, Ruben Hernandez, and Margot Macias. Please join us next week for another episode of Voices of Taos.”