By Mechele Cooper, The Morning Sentinel
SOLON — Ellen Hills has been trying to find a way to turn land that has been in her family since the 1880s into a “green” cemetery.
A green cemetery is a final resting place where graves are placed randomly throughout woods and fields. The graves are marked only in natural ways, with the planting of a tree or shrub, perhaps, or the placement of a flat indigenous stone that may or may not be engraved.
The concept is slowly catching on in other parts of the country, and in a big way in Great Britain, where there are more than 200 green cemeteries.
“I would like it to be a sanctuary where people can come and spend time with loved ones who have passed away,” Hills said, “a memorial garden with woods for strolling through. And I definitely want it to be a green resting place without all the environmental pollution.”
Hills, an 85-year-old retired school teacher, read about green burials in the July 2004 edition of the AARP Bulletin and said she thought it would be a perfect way to preserve her 14-acre parcel in South Orrington.
A typical green cemetery requires that bodies not be embalmed, caskets be biodegradable, and graves be marked only with simple, flat stones in a natural preserve with streams and wildflowers and forests.
For the past year and a half, Hills has been working closely with Ernest Marriner, secretary of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine, on her vision.
Marriner said the alliance’s board of directors agreed Jan. 21 to explore Hills’ idea, possibly with another organization or owner of a funeral home. He said the board might even look into creating an entity to handle the enterprise.
“We’ll get a report in April to see if we can legally do this, and what the ramifications are,” Marriner said. “It is something that would appeal to a certain clientele in Maine, offering options that are not available. There may be a market for this kind of facility in the future.”
Clough Toppan, director of the division of environmental health for the Department of Health and Human Services, said cemetery expansions, new cemeteries, mausoleums and crypts have to be approved by the Bureau of Health.
Municipal zoning laws are another factor, but Toppan said there is nothing in state law to prevent someone from creating a green burial ground.
“She can do anything she wants as long as she meets the requirements for water supplies or well,” Toppan said. “It has to be something like 200 feet from a well.”
James Jacobsen of the environmental health division said there is no acreage requirement for cemeteries except for a family plot, which must be limited to no more than a quarter acre in size.
Billy and Kimberley Campbell, founders of Memorial Ecosystems Inc. — a leader in the green cemetery business — said they created the first “green cemetery” in the United States in 1996, when they created a natural preserve and cemetery on 32 acres of mixed woodlands and open fields near Westminster, S.C.
According to the Memorial Ecosystems Web site, modern cemeteries too often destroy natural landscapes and create fertilized, herbicided environments.
A tremendous amount of money goes into expensive leakproof caskets, vaults and mausoleum crypts, and to perpetual care. The average cost of funeral, burial space, casket and vault is now exceeding $5,000, and can go considerably higher.
Mary Woodsen, vice president of the Pre-Posthumous Society of Ithaca, N.Y., is trying to bring natural memorial preserves to New York. She is involved in the creation of a 100-acre green cemetery in Upstate New York that will open in the spring.
Woodsen said conventional cemeteries turn beautiful places into monoculture of gravestones — a landfill of embalmed chemical and cement. Then, she said backhoes, lawnmowers and tree pruners put diesel emissions into the air and pesticides and fertilizers into the water.
Interments at the Campbells’ cemetery must be natural. That means no toxic embalming fluids, no vaults and only biodegradable caskets.
The park doesn’t allow cement grave liners and also prohibits plastic flowers and standing headstones.
Studies in the United States, Britain, Australia and Brazil have documented numerous environmental hazards associated with typical funeral arrangements. For example, formaldehyde in embalming fluid may be leaching into water tables. The federal Environmental Protection Agency regulates formaldehyde — a known carcinogen — as hazardous waste.
As an alternative, refrigeration can be used to maintain a body while it awaits a funeral service, advocates of green cemeteries say.
Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have put in place standards to reducing emissions from crematories. In Europe, mercury emissions from crematories is considered the second largest source of airborne mercury.
Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council, a nonprofit he founded to encourage environmental sustainability in the funeral industry, wants to educate people about alternative end-of-life rituals that are more affordable, meaningful and earth-friendly.
“It’s time for us to understand that burial can, in fact, be done in an affordable, ecologically sound manner that furthers the healing process and reduces the need for assistance by strangers,” Sehee said.
Mechele Cooper — 623-3811, Ext. 408
Source - http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/2478866.shtml