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Conservation-friendly burials |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 05 June 2004 |
By Carla Bova
Marin, CA may be home to the first "nature preserve cemetery" in the state where the dead can be buried naturally and the living can hike on trails through land that will be preserved as open space. There would be no embalming, no metal caskets and no tombstones.
Instead the dead could be buried in a a biodegradable box or nothing at all. Grave markers would be items that appear in nature like rocks and plants.
"We do the dust to dust approach where people decay naturally," said Kimberley Campbell, one of the project's creators. "This is nothing new. It is how people were buried in the old days, for centuries and centuries, especially in rural areas."
The cemetery preserve near Mill Valley would be on 32 acres at the site of the former Daphne Fernwood Cemetery at 301 Tennessee Valley Road.
People would be buried on about three acres of the land, including two acres of existing graves. The rest of the property would be open space with trails and public access.
Weddings, cultural events and symposia would be encouraged at the site.
"We want it to be utilized by the community," said project spokesman Joe Sehee.
The existing historic cemetery dates back to the 1800s with graves belonging to workers of the Sausalito Land and Ferry Co. Cemetery records have been lost or destroyed but members of the project team are researching the history and culture of the site.
The project is still in the development stages. There will be several community meetings in the summer to discuss the plans with neighbors and local organizations. The cemetery is expected to open in the fall, Sehee said.
"We do not anticipate opposition for what we are doing," Sehee said. "It will not cause traffic problems but it will guarantee the site is preserved as open space forever."
Neighbor John Comstock, who has lived nearby on Almonte Boulevard for 30 years, hikes weekly through the cemetery and leads regular bird watching trips through there.
"I am favorable to the idea of green cemeteries," Comstock said. "It is better to be recycled more quickly. I see it as a means to respectfully honor people who have passed in a local beautiful setting while still being sensitive to the environmental impact."
The cemetery is a joint venture of Forever Enterprises based in Clayton, Mo., and Memorial Ecosystems based in Westminster, S.C.
"Memorial Ecosystems has the ecological expertise doing natural, green burials," Sehee said. "They were interested in growing the idea but needed a cemetery partner with management and marketing expertise which Forever Enterprises has," he said. "They combined forces."
Forever Enterprises owns six cemeteries and funeral homes in the United States. Its president, Tyler Cassity, purchased the cemetery site in Marin. The sale is in escrow, due to close in July.
Billy and Kimberley Campbell created Memorial Ecosystems in 1996 and opened the first nature preserve cemetery in the United States called Ramsey Creek Preserve in South Carolina in 1998.
"We were the first in the country to do natural burials in a nature preserve setting," Kimberley Campbell said. "Our goal is to create a nature preserve with a cemetery function but people could be married there or have their child baptized there or plant a tree. It is not just about death."
Ramsey Creek is a 32-acre preserve and has about 20 natural burials there.
"There is no embalming which is an invasive procedure where organs are removed and blood is replaced by chemicals," Campbell said.
"In a normal burial, highly carcinogenic embalming fluid is used and a vault is required but we are returning to a time 100 years ago when bodies in biodegradable caskets decompose naturally and return to the ecosystem," Sehee said.
Campbell said the most frequently asked question she gets about the natural burial is whether bodies get disturbed up wild animals.
"When we dig graves, we do not remove any of the soil so there are mounds," Campbell said. "When people are buried under seven feet of dirt an animal is not going to dig them up."
Another question is whether it harms ground water. Campbell said no.
"When we die, if we have a disease, the disease dies with us," Campbell said.
There is a team of about five architects working on the project led by architect Sim Van Der Ryn of the Ecological Design Institute in Sausalito.
Landscape architect David Schwartz of Mill Valley, who is part of the team, said there will be an environmental analysis of the site's natural features including plants, animals, geology, soils and water to determine appropriate areas for burials and areas for habitat restoration.
"We have environmental guidelines we put together through our knowledge of natural systems. For example, we will not put a grave near an oak tree or in a sensitive meadow," Schwartz said. "We have a whole pile of statutes and will adhere to California state standards."
Laws vary from state to state. California requires bodies be buried at least 18 inches deep and requires they be buried certain distances away from a river or a creek.
Schwartz said there is currently an application with the county seeking permission to remodel the existing facility so that it meets accessibility standards.
"We are doing things that do not require permits like making trails and habitat restoration," Schwartz said.
Sehee said use permits are not required. "It is already zoned as a cemetery," he said.
There is a federal application to remove nonnative plants and the project officials are awaiting the state license transfer from the former owner to the new owner.
Sehee said in most states, laws require that cemeteries set aside proceeds in a fund dedicated for grounds upkeep including watering the lawns and maintaining grave markers.
"The idea is to apply the cemetery model as a conservation tool,"Sehee said. "We would bury people on a very small percent of the land, preserve the rest as open space and use the endowment care fund instead to do land restoration and get rid of invasive plants."
"We would like to demonstrate that the Marin prototype is viable and replicate it elsewhere," Sehee said. The goal is to conserve one million acres of land across the country.
Ernest Cook of the Trust for Public Land, based in San Francisco, said cemetery land adjoins property that the Trust bought from a private owner and sold to the National Park Service.
The trust is a national nonprofit land conservation organization that was instrumental in saving the Marin Headlands and Golden Gate National Recreation Area from development.
"We protected the land that immediately adjoins this cemetery site about four years ago and our goal is to provide more opportunity for public access to and through the property and to promote restoration of the land," Cook said. "The cemetery proposal includes both of those elements."
Cook said to further those goals, the trust is considering a conservation easement to prevent future development at the site.
"We are considering holding a conservation easement over the property that would give us the right to make sure these owners or future owners do not do anything that would be inconsistent with the land being in a natural state and open to the public," Cook said.
http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24407~2192372,00.html |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.” Aeschylus
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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