La Baca Troubled
A solar-powered temple on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is built on land donated by Maurice and Hanne Strong.

BAD VIBES / In La Baca, Colorado, disputes over the exploitation of underground water feature mystics, Canadian millionaires and skeptical locals

BY MIRO CERNETIG
The Globe and Mail

Strange and magical things are said to happen in Colorado’s San Luis valley. 
   Mystics, millionaires and visionaries living in the desert valley believe that the heavens can speak and that dead prophets drop in for visits. Close your eyes, they say, and the thin mountain air crackles with the primordial thrum of the cosmos.
   These days, though, the peace is being spoiled by what residents call “bad vibes.”
   A powerful force from Canada – Vancouver billionaire Sam Belzberg – wants to drill deep into the floor of the desert in southwestern Colorado, pump out the valley’s water and sell it for billions of dollars to Denver, the state’s parched capital.
   Almost everyone, from dirt-poor migrant workers to eclectic travelers who go to La Baca to commune with soothsayers and ancient spirits, fear that the plan will suck the area dry and make a few rich men richer.
   “They’re after the water under this valley and they’re going to make obscene amounts of money if they get their hands on the water,” says Greg Gosar, a prosperous organic farmer who is a spokesman for a citizen’s group the water development. Unfortunately, greed isn’t illegal in America.” (missing text)
   It is Mr. Strong who introduced Mr. Belzberg to the San Luis Valley, and that led to the formation of American Water Development Inc., the Denver-based company that wants to tap into the water.
   So, while Mr. Strong wins kudos internationally for organizing a global UN environmental conference in Brazil for 1992, he is viewed by many in La Baca with suspicion.
   That is a sad thing for Mr. Strong, because it is in this valley that he and his wife, Hanne, are laying the groundwork for what amounts to a new world order.
   Their plan is to be ready for the beginning of a new Dark Age, says Mrs. Strong, a self-styled visionary whose apocalyptic vision of the future  involves the Earth’s population shrinking to about 400 million people in the next few years as the result of environmental degradation.
   “AIDS will be nothing next to the things that are coming,” says Mrs. Strong, who hopes to turn the San Luis Valley, which she describes  as a powerful “dream corridor” and the birthplace of “ancient souls,” into a repository of all the world’s knowledge.
   Such talk – as well as a plan to build a conference centre for world-leaders, routine visits by Rockefellers, actress