If there’s anything I hate — if there’s any one thing that’s driven me into the green movement more than anything else — it’s senseless, stupid waste.
And what could be more wasteful than setting fire to five perfectly good luxury homes for sale in rural Snohomish County?
You tell me or enter your comments below.
I’d love to see a discussion here on the destruction that occurred this morning near Maltby at the 2007 Street of Dreams cul-de-sac in the Quinn’s Crossing development.
Last summer, I walked through every one of the homes during construction. I’ll admit: I wasn’t touring the homes as much as an Eco Geek as a Home &Garden reporter, which is another one of my duties here at The Herald.
No, the Street of Dreams isn’t the greenest housing in the world. During the organization’s 20-year history, the home tour has featured ginormous homes including one in 2006 with more than 11,000 square feet of living space, which amounts to glorified, wretched excess, I suppose.
But every home in the Street of Dreams this past year was much smaller, about 4,000 square feet each, and each was built to at least a 3-Star certification as part of the Built Green program of King and Snohomish counties.
Two of the homes achieved 4-Star ratings and one — The Urban Lodge, which completely burned to the ground this morning according to a Herald photographer — was certified at the 5-Star level. All Built Green levels above the 3-Star rating are major achievements. They require independent third-party analysis from outside the county program.
Street of Dreams organizers may have started out skirting the edges of greenwashing, but the tour proved itself quite green indeed.
Each of the homes utilized a variety of green strategies, ranging from drought-tolerant landscaping to dual-flush toilets to green building processes and materials such as sustainably raised and harvested Treadlight flooring made from small-diameter Western larch, also known as tamarack.
More than 80,000 people had toured the homes by the end of August last year.
Many of them were no doubt inspired to purchase green materials such as cork flooring, recycled tile or perhaps just an Energy Star appliance or two.
Were these projects, including a goodly bit of Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood, the first thing the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which left a sign near the scene, could think of turning into noxious gases for the earth’s atmosphere?
Come on! How does this help?
Washington needs people who can make positive change, not extremists who want to send even the tiniest baby steps of progress up in toxic smoke.
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