The Ithaca Journal
Work has begun on the Irish Hill Road property slated for New York state’s first environmentally-conscious cemetery. The Green Springs Natural Cemetery Association was told by the state cemetery board they do not need town approval as originally thought.
The four-member group made up of Ithaca and Corning residents received preliminary permission to incorporate in April from the New York State Cemetery Board.
Their plan is to bury people without embalming fluid, in simple, locally-made pine boxes on larger plots of land, according to Mary Woodsen, the association’s president and Ithaca resident.
The low-density burial site would have graves marked by simple stones or native trees and shrubs. In 100 years, the place might look like a forest with some meadow areas.
They are now awaiting for the New York State Supreme Court to approve the sale of the land, per New York state law. The 100 acres that straddles Irish Hill Road next to Cornell University’s Arnot Forest is owned by Herb Engman, an Ithaca Town Board member.
The idea doesn’t sit well with all the Newfield town board members. At a meeting last week, the two groups talked about several concerns, including the business’s future and ground water contamination.
Newfield town board member Karen Van Etten is worried about what would happen to the property if the association’s cemetery business folded.
“Ninety percent of new businesses fail within the first year,” she said. “My concern would be being a cemetery and it failing, it would come back to the town’s responsibility. We already have quite a bit going on. We don’t need any more plopped on us.”
Van Etten said that if the town had a comprehensive plan, the board would have a say in the project.
“I think this would be a catalyst for the town to consider a comprehensive plan so others cannot just set up a pig farm… next door to somebody,” she said. She also worried about the fact that there are only a few other similar cemeteries — including one in South Carolina and one planned in California — in the country.
“I would still consider that experimental,” Van Etten said.
The whole concept is nothing new, said Tom Fuller, a consultant for the project and a former instructor at the Simmons Institute of Funeral Service. Orthodox Jews and the Amish still bury their dead without embalming the body.
Placing the dead under the ground itself slows the putrefaction process –when a body bloats and swells — he said. It also slows the decaying process. Still, an unembalmed body underground can be decomposed down to the skeleton in a year to 18 months.
The body would not contaminate groundwater unless it is placed in a swampy area, which is hard to dig a grave in, Fuller added.
“A modern septic tank with a leech field has got to be 10 times worse than a body,” he said of contaminating groundwater.
The association began making a preliminary path through the first area for burials this weekend. The “lower meadow” area will encompass about six to eight acres on the southwest end of the property, Woodsen said.
But no one will be buried on the site until the association raises $25,000 toward the project. The group of four members sent commitment letters last week to those who expressed interest in the project, asking them to buy burial plots. One letter has returned so far. The association’s smallest plots — 10 feet by 15 feet — cost $500, Woodsen said.
The property would be low-maintenance, Woodsen added, because only paths would be mowed into the forest-like area.
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