March 6th, 2008 · No Comments

By John DeFore

Fires that broke out Monday in Maltby, Washington, outside of Seattle, consumed three new luxury homes and damaged a fourth (firefighters were able to save the fifth). The culprits, if preliminary evidence is to be believed, consider themselves environmentalists.

A sign nearby, scrawled on a sheet, claimed the fires were set by the Earth Liberation Front, a group of radicals who have been setting fires and vandalizing property for years in the name of environmentalism. The message (which ATF investigators have been careful to note hasn’t been definitively linked to the group) described the homes as “McMansions” and disputed their green marketing claims.

The houses at the Quinn’s Crossing development, shown off during Seattle’s 2007 Street of Dreams tour, certainly weren’t modest. Each was around 4,500 square feet and cost nearly $2 million. But size aside, the builder had employed green building practices like using reclaimed lumber and designing landscaping that required minimal water. A sales website for the properties had touted them as “gentler on the environment and also sized right,” but also detailed luxury touches like two-story waterfalls and “espresso stations” that don’t necessarily fall neatly into the green aesthetic.

Established environmental groups were quick to denounce the attacks. Dave Willett, national press secretary of the Sierra Club, says “we strongly condemn acts of violence done in the name of the environment and think it’s very harmful to our cause. There’s a role for different kinds of protest, including civil disobedience, but acts of violence are a whole different thing, including acts against property — we’re not ambivalent about that at all.”

Moreover, the fact that the houses hadn’t been sold and were unoccupied doesn’t make them simple crimes against property “the biggest concern when these things happen is the potential for people or animals to be hurt – just because there aren’t people living in the homes, any time you’re going to require rescue or fire personnel, they’re going to be putting their lives on the line to stop something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

He went further to describe such sabotage as not only wrong but ineffective: “I do know that in most cases, acts of violence aren’t what stop developments that need to be stopped. What has worked in the past is democratic participation. In many cases, where people resort to arson and vandalism they don’t stop the project — with the amount of money involved in this development, it’s likely they’ll now rebuild and use twice the resources…These are not people who are thinking strategically.”

Then there’s the not-inconsequential immediate environmental harm caused by the saboteurs — the carbon released by the blaze and the fumes produced by any hazardous materials that might have been on the site.

Jon Coifman, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, takes science seriously enough to refuse to comment on how the fire’s impact balances against that of the construction itself. “I honestly don’t know, without digging much more deeply into this,” he says, explaining that the numbers would vary widely depending on details like the kinds of varnish used and the amount of plastic in fixtures. But he concedes that “it’s hard to see how someone’s honest agenda here is strictly a concern for the environment. It certainly would be ironic to see that the pollution exceeded what you had already.”

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