Cemeteries consider “green burials”
By PAM ZUBECK, THE GAZETTE
How would you like to spend eternity?
In a silk-lined casket under dew-laden bluegrass and granite stones, borders and benches? That’ll be up to $200,000, please, depending on the size of your family.
Or in an egg-crate box or “ecopod,” biodegrading beneath native grasses and wildflowers? A “green burial” would cost significantly less and provide a back-to-earth experience for those who want to reduce their carbon footprint even after they’re dead.
Those are among ideas to be outlined for the Colorado Springs City Council on Monday as part of an effort to build new product lines and services for the city’s two cemeteries, Evergreen and Fairview.
The reason is simple: Cemeteries must bring in earthly riches to keep things looking heavenly.
The city estimates the two cemeteries need $3.5 million in equipment and improvements, such as vehicles, irrigation systems, fencing and maintenance facilities.
Another $785,765 is needed if the city decides to fix stone and concrete borders that edge many old grave plots.
For traditional burials, the cemeteries are well-set. Evergreen has 75 to 100 years of space left, while Fairview has 25.
Problem is, the trend is toward cremation, and the city’s cemeteries don’t get much business.
Of the 3,400 who die in El Paso County annually, 400 are taken from the region, 500 choose a city cemetery for traditional burial, 500 use another cemetery and 2,000 elect for cremation.
Evergreen and Fairview offer burial of cremated remains in the ground or a columbarium, or scattering in a special garden. But the city could do more, Parks Director Paul Butcher thinks.
Evergreen has 22 vacant acres on its southwest side that could be used by a cremation business with which the city might partner.
“The biggest challenge facing the cemeteries is the shift in the death care industry toward cremation,” Butcher said. “You always want to follow the trends.”
Among the money-making ideas:
• Appeal to a small but lucrative market with estate burials featuring monuments, sculpture, crypts, walls, benches and gates that command higher prices. Some places charge up to $200,000 for a family plot and up to $70,000 for bench estates. Additional perpetual-care endowment charges would be collected to assure the walls and benches are well maintained.
• Offer green burials. Bodies would be buried in bags, wicker baskets or egg-carton boxes, lowering customer costs. The city’s costs also would decline, because the plots would require no sprinkler systems or watering, and little mowing.
• Go into the headstone foundation business, now largely provided by headstone companies. The city could offer a foundation as an added feature when selling gravesites.
• Finish renovating The Chapel near Evergreen’s entrance. Built in 1909, the stone building with stainedglass windows could be used for funerals and weddings.
Weddings?
“Everybody has their own taste,” Butcher said, adding that he was shocked when the cemeteries manager told him people wanted to tie the knot amid gravesites.
The chapel’s restoration, which has cost $300,000 in donations, needs a like amount to complete heating, plumbing and seating.
As the city tries to find new markets for the cemeteries, its goals are complicated by plans for a veterans cemetery in southern El Paso County. Almost a third of Evergreen’s business is military folks, Butcher said.
Whatever is decided, taxpayers won’t be affected. The cemeteries are self-sustaining, relying on lot sales and interment charges for capital improvements and on endowment fees for perpetual care.
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Contact the writer: 636-0238 or pam.zubeck@gazette.com
THE CEMETERIES
Evergreen Cemetery Established: 1871 Deeded to the city: 1875 Size: 200 acres Graves: 80,000 Location: 1005 S. Hancock Ave.
Fairview Cemetery Established: 1895 Deeded to the city: 1917 Size: 32 acres Graves: 13,000 Location: 1000 S. 26th St.
REPORT
The cemetery report will be given at an informal meeting of the Colorado Springs City Council at 1 p.m. Monday at City Hall, 107 N. Nevada Ave.
I did not even know Green Burial was an option till checking several websites. One site offered all natural cloth materials with herbs. I like the thought of someone caring for my body with repect after I’m gone. Sounds so much better than cremation or a hard casket. Is this an option here is Colorado Springs? Do you go through a funeral home? Comment: It would have been nice to have written the following sentence in a more compassionate way.
“Bodies would be buried in bags, wicker baskets or egg-carton boxes, lowering customer costs.”
Would a green burial provide a place for a tombstone?