In towns across America, cemeteries once stood apart as peaceful havens for the dead. But now some are becoming bitter battlegrounds for the living.
Cemeteries, increasingly squeezed for land, are trying to expand as the population ages and mortality rates rise. Now they are butting heads with environmentalists and open-space advocates who say graves encroach upon wildlife and habitat.
While other businesses can expand into far-flung locales, cemeteries are stuck. Families want to be buried together, so graveyard operators must seek out contiguous property–and therein lies the problem.
At Pine Hills Cemetery in Quincy, Mass., rows of gray and rose granite headstones wind through graceful pines and oaks. In the fading afternoon light, elderly women sit in lawn chairs, trimming long strands of grass around tombstones.
But trouble came to Pine Hills about a year ago, when it started cutting down trees to develop two new acres of wetland adjacent to existing plots. When members of a local environmental group, Friends of the Blue Hills, got wind of the plan, they feared for the safety of two endangered species–copperhead snakes and Eastern timber rattlesnakes.
The environmentalists notified city and state officials, charging that the cemetery lacked the proper development permits. Quincy’s Conservation Commission issued a cease-and-desist order that for now has stalled expansion.
“Cemeteries use pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, and those aren’t friendly to animals,” says David Hodgdon, the founder of Friends of the Blue Hills
“I don’t see why cemeteries and open space can’t coexist,” counters Richard McNeice, general foreman of Quincy’s cemeteries. “We see foxes, hawks and rabbits in here all the time.”
The cemetery wasn’t aware permits were required on the disputed property, he says. He fears the cemetery will run out of burial space in five years, and figures that getting the proper permits could take as long as seven years.
Pine Hills has expanded before. Back in 1995, the cemetery added two adjacent acres that were expected to be sufficient for 10 years. Some 200 plots were sold in the first three weeks after the addition opened, and it is already half full.
Demand for burial space is growing across the nation. In 1996, there were 2.3 million deaths in the U.S., 14 percent more than in 1986, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Deaths are expected to increase to 2.7 million a year by 2007.
Cemetery-space shortages are particularly acute in the Northeast, where large tracts of land in and around urban areas are hard to find. Almost half of 49 cemeteries in a Boston area survey expect to run out of space in 10 years.
Florida, with its large elderly population, also faces a tombstone jam. Only three new cemeteries have opened in the state in the last five years.
Passions run high when survivors are told that their loved ones cannot be buried in the towns where they lived. When Ellen O’Brien Cushman’s father died seven years ago, she had to send him to a cemetery 10 miles from their hometown of Belmont, Mass. The Belmont cemetery hasn’t accepted new graves for nine years.
“My father lived in Belmont all his life,” O’Brien Cushman says. “He served on committees, volunteered and did business here. People knew his name. In the town he’s buried in, no one knows him.”
As a member of Belmont’s cemetery commission, she is pushing an effort to clear 10 acres of hardwood forest to build a new cemetery. Town officials will vote on the issue this fall.
Belmont environmentalists oppose the graveyard, saying residents have long used the land as an area of contemplation amid birds and other wildlife. One environmentalist suggested turning a car dealership’s vacant lot into a cemetery instead.
High real estate prices add to the graveyard space crunch. The municipal cemetery in Burlington, Vt., for example, lacks the funds to buy six acres of adjacent land. The property is prime frontage on Lake Champlain.
“We will probably keep putting off buying the land in favor of building libraries and playgrounds until it becomes a crisis situation,” says David White, Burlington’s city planner.
Backlogged cemeteries are being forced to consider some unusual countermoves. In Hartford, Conn., where municipal cemeteries are expected to be full in two years, city officials weighed double-stacking caskets in single grave sites.
“People were so enraged about the thought of their loved ones sharing grave space with strangers that we decided to drop our space-saving ideas,” says Saundra Kee Borges, Hartford’s city manager.
The city also dropped plans to build a new cemetery. When space is gone, “people will have to use more expensive private cemeteries,” Kee Borges says.
Tempe, Ariz., finds itself between a rock and hard place, literally. Its one cemetery reached capacity two years ago, and the rest of the cemetery property is mainly rock. The city says it would cost $1 million to develop additional grave sites.
So Tempe turned the cemetery over to a private developer, Gil Szajna, who has promised to resoil some of the land to increase burial space. He also is considering the construction of a 30-foot-tall mausoleum, which Szajna figures should take care of the city’s deceased for the next 100 years.
