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Date: 6/13/2023
SHUTEBURY — Last year Lisa Kuerzel, abutter to the Jewish Cemetery at 221 Leverett Rd., noticed a burial seemed pretty close to her water well.
“There is a burial within 100 feet of our well,” Kuerzel told Board of Health members at a Feb. 15 meeting. “We measured that after a body went in, in Jan. 2022. That’s when we brought it to the attention of the Board of Health and the DEP,” the state Department of Environmental Protection.
About 18 months after Kuerzel first grew concerned, the board issued a decision on green burials at the Jewish Cemetery, which is owned by the Jewish Community of Amherst. Green burials are those that may promote a better integration of the body into the surrounding soil, primarily by foregoing the cement vaults used in more traditional burials. The complicated discussion seemed to establish the major difference comes down to those structural elements.
The board has no jurisdiction over the town’s burial regulations. It is mandated to protect drinking water supplies, hence its involvement in setting boundaries within the cemetery for the natural burial of the deceased. A difficulty in setting boundaries, Board Chair Catherine Hilton discovered, is that little research and guidance is available, anywhere, to inform municipalities about the possible threat to aquifers and residential wells.
The board was working with the Cemetery Commission in 2017 to look at this issue in regards to the West Cemetery. The topic was not settled. Since then, the DEP issued guidelines for setbacks to protect residential wells adjacent to graveyards. Hilton found the guidelines overly restrictive. Under those DEP guidelines, green burials at the Jewish Cemetery would not be allowed.
“We find ourselves between two property owners, adjoining, who have two different objectives, and we’re trying to thread the needle between them, in such a way not to be unfair to anyone, and not to threaten the public health,” Hilton said. “So the question we need to answer is, is the public health demonstrably endangered by not adopting the recommended setbacks?”
The recommended setback from residential wells for a single green burial or a family plot is 300 feet. In the case of a hybrid cemetery, a mix of traditional and green interments, the recommended setback is 750 feet. That is also the setback recommended for a green cemetery with a density of 50 burials per acre.
Hilton argued against adhering to the DEP setbacks as being unduly restrictive when compared with the setbacks established for other circumstances. The setback for a well located near a septic system leach field is 100 feet. The well setback from an entire landfill is 500 feet.
Discussion clarified important differences between a landfill and a cemetery. Rainwater routinely circulates through a landfill and organic matter is constantly being added. That is not true of a graveyard, which sees a one time addition of matter to any particular plot.
Hilton found relevant information in the State of Maryland’s regulations for onsite food disposal systems, which are meant to protect water sources from many of the same elements as a decomposing cadaver. The white paper written by Kevin Koepenick, available on the town’s website, noted that very little organic matter migrates out of the burial chamber. Salts, potassium and other primarily non-threatening elements remain within a foot of the original placement of a body.
Matter migrates with the assistance of water. The groundwater at the JCA cemetery is below the level where bodies will rest.
“The hydro-geological conditions appear to be very good,” Hilton said. “Eight test pits were dug on the site. They were all eight feet deep. It was done in March, the moment when the groundwater was at its highest point…None of them hit ground water.”
Graves are less than 8 feet deep. Water flow through interments should be minimal. Board members seemed to accept there would be little additional threat to water sources.
Significant discussion centered on the density of green burials. The JCA began green burials in 2018, with about six plots used since. Keren Rhodes, who represented the JCA in its dealings with the board, clarified that green burials are being spread out to a lower density, in part to avoid disturbing tree roots, but also because both grassy and treed plots are being used for green burial.
“We had lawn area and forest area for green burial,” Rhodes said. “We have to give you a plan, but we do understand we are limited to 90 burial sites.”
The total green burials allowed may be 91, with 85 remaining, which will be clarified by Rhodes. Kuerzel and abutter Chris Elliot asked pointed questions that clarified the burials will take place in a 1.5 acre area. Board members considered the entire acreage of the cemetery more important in calculating the number of green burials to allow.
At the June 7 meeting of the Board of Health, the board ruled a distance no less than 100 feet be maintained between a natural burial and private water wells. For abutters across the street, the 100 foot setback measures from the road right-of-way that separates the homeowner’s property from the road. No more than 50 green burials are allowed per acre in the cemetery. Green burials are also not allowed where the slope of the land is greater than 3-to-1, at least until the plot in stabilized.
The ruling applies only to green burials interred after Feb. 15, 2023.