Centex Practices Unsustainable Development

As an avid follower of your publication since its inception, I always look forward to the valuable information that comes with each issue. However, the article about Centex Homes (Newsbriefs,

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 11) is highly misleading. We are intimately aware of how Centex does business from dealing with them on a project they are involved in right next door to us, the Riddle Farm, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Although Centex insinuates that they practice “sustainable development” by pledging $2.25 million to The Nature Conservancy over the next three years to support preserves in three states, they sure are not practicing responsible land use or good business here in our community.

On a sensitive 1,000-acre [400 ha] waterfront tract, Centex is destroying the most ecologically significant 500-acre [200 ha] contiguous coastal maritime forest in our entire watershed and dozens of acres of nontidal wetlands. Their project is a classic example of what NOT to do according to everything I’ve ever read in your fine publication:

Sprawl at its worst!

We presented Centex with an alternative plan that would save the forest and wetlands by concentrating the project on the upland fields in a New Urbanist-type setting. A Centex executive recognized that this plan would lower infrastructure costs, increase profits, and make friends with the local community and County/State permitting agencies by saving a most valuable resource. Sadly, the response was that they didn’t have the time to do what they knew was right; they have anxious stockholders to satisfy.

We in this community view Centex’s pledge to The Nature Conservancy, as large as it seems, as mere greenwashing. The monetary value of the green infrastructure they are devastating here in our watershed is worth more to the economic and ecological health of this community than the millions of dollars they are spending on conservation in states thousands of miles from here. Simply cutting a big check to The Nature Conservancy is not practicing sustainable development. Robbing Peter (local communities) to pay Paul (national image building) is not equitable or honest.

We challenge Centex Homes to practice true “sustainable development” on every project they are involved in, not just where it is high-profile and convenient.

Ron Cascio

Friends of Herring and

Turville Creeks

Ocean City, Maryland