The Centre for Natural Burial

By Jennifer Burk - jburk@macon.com

A new law that will make it tougher to build new cemeteries and will prohibit natural burials in Bibb County has drawn national attention.

Natural burial and consumer advocates have come forward to say county commissioners are misinformed in their decision to severely limit cemetery locations and dictate how bodies are buried.

They say the new ordinance tramples on consumers’ rights.

“This is absolutely alarming and outrageous,” said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Vermont-based Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit consumer education group. “This was an extreme step backwards.”

The law, which doesn’t apply to existing cemeteries, sets strict rules regarding where cemeteries can be placed, and it demands that bodies be buried in a leak-proof casket or vault. Several advocates, including an author of a book on funeral law, said the Bibb law is the first of its kind in the country.

It essentially shuts out a “green” cemetery planned for 10 acres in east Bibb near the Twiggs County line. The cemetery would have used natural burial practices in which a body is untreated by chemicals and buried in a biodegradable coffin or shroud.

The Bibb County commission passed the ordinance Tuesday with the intention of protecting residents from health and safety hazards allegedly associated with decomposing bodies.

But advocates said no threat exists, and there is no public health rationale for the regulations.

“People who are concerned about leakage from bodies, I understand their concerns, but they’re wrong. They’re flat wrong,” said Slocum, who has authored a packet detailing myths regarding dead bodies.

In it, he cites the Pan-American Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

Commissioner Lonzy Edwards said the commission did “the same research the (east Bibb) residents did” when they opposed the green cemetery at the Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. He also said he tried to independently verify the data, although he couldn’t remember the sources and was out of his office and couldn’t check.

Still, Edwards, who led the charge on the unanimously approved cemetery ordinance, said it wouldn’t have mattered to him if he didn’t see a single study.

“It just flies in the face of common sense to say it poses no hazard to residents,” he said of natural burials.

He equated burying bodies in a decomposable coffin to not lining a landfill before filling it with trash and accused the natural burial and consumer advocates of having financial interests in seeing green cemeteries built.

Outsiders do not know what is best for Bibb County, he said.

This is a classic example of a “not in my backyard” attitude used to express opposition to civic projects such as a jail or landfill that are considered dangerous or unsightly, said Joe Sehee, executive director of the Santa Fe, N.M.-based Green Burial Council, which provides standards for natural burial grounds.

“It’s based on a fear and a lack of understanding,” said Dr. Billy Campbell, a physician and CEO of South Carolina-based Memorial Ecosystems. “There’s just not that much that survives long-term in the ground.”

Bibb Commissioner Elmo Richardson said there are various opinions on whether decomposing bodies pose a threat to the environment. Either way, Bibb did not have an ordinance regulating cemeteries on the books, and the county needed one, he said.

County Attorney Virgil Adams researched other county ordinances that were used to develop Bibb’s ordinance, Richardson said.

Green cemetery advocates further said there’s no such thing as “leak-proof” caskets or vaults, and when they do leak, they pollute the ground with chemicals used when the body is embalmed.

“They’re basically asking for more pollutants to be buried in their own cemeteries,” Slocum said.

Advocates also ask why commissioners wouldn’t require existing cemeteries to only use leak-proof caskets if decomposing bodies pose such a threat.

Edwards said the commission didn’t feel it could regulate cemeteries that already are permitted and in business.

The ordinance also takes away consumers’ rights to decide how to be buried, drives up the cost of funeral expenses, interferes with some religious beliefs and stifles entrepreneurship, advocates said.

Lamar Hankins, a Texas attorney and chairman of the legal committee for the Funeral Consumers Alliance, called the Bibb ordinance “arbitrary” and in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Edwards, who is also a lawyer, said people choosing more natural methods for religious beliefs or other reasons still have that option in existing cemeteries.

As for stifling business, Edwards called the argument “lame.”

“There’s all types of illegal, immoral activities that people can engage in if we were to let the argument about business” stand, he said.

“There’s a higher standard in Bibb County,” he said.

To contact writer Jennifer Burk, call 744-4345.