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Crematory plan's legal but neighborliness counts, too

By Times editorial
Published September 17, 2006

Dozens of Largo residents who live near the site of a proposed crematory had no problem last week concluding whether the project is or isn't compatible with their neighborhood: It isn't.

At a meeting of the Largo Planning Board Thursday, they said a new crematory will bring increased traffic, noise, lights, odors and, of particular concern to them, potentially hazardous emissions to their community. A crematory, they said, doesn't belong next to a neighborhood.

The Planning Board voted 3-2 against recommending the project to the City Commission, even though the city staff said the project met code requirements and should be approved.

"I've never seen such a public outcry against a project as we've seen tonight," said one board member, Steve Terepka. "I think that demonstrates it's not compatible."

Public outcry is not the measure of incompatibility. And the Largo city code says cemeteries with crematories are allowed on institutional sites like Serenity Gardens Memorial Park, a cemetery that has existed for more than 100 years along Indian Rocks Road and Wilcox Road in south Largo. Adjacent properties to the east and west also are institutional.

Serenity Gardens wants to build a 13,177-square-foot crematory on the southeast corner of their property fronting on Wilcox Road. However, across Wilcox Road there are single-family homes. Therefore, residents say, the crematory doesn't satisfy the city's requirement that a project be consistent with surrounding uses.

Serenity Gardens representatives said that the nearest homes are 120 feet away across Wilcox Road, and that the crematory will be buffered from the homes not just by such distance, but also by two lines of trees and other landscaping.

When being operated properly, modern crematories produce only small amounts of smoke. The emissions can contain carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and particulates, but in such small amounts that government regulators consider them insignificant pollution sources. The 10 crematories in Pinellas have operated quietly and with few complaints.

That is no comfort to residents near Serenity Gardens, who don't want a commercial crematory with storage facilities for up to 100 bodies across the street. Their position is understandable. Indeed, a crematory seems more appropriate for an industrial or commercial site.

Yet the law in Largo says a crematory is legal in a cemetery, and Serenity Gardens' plans would help meet the growing need for more facilities to perform cremation in a county where there is little land left for graveyards.

City commissioners will have to weigh all of these conflicting issues to make an appropriate decision. It won't be easy. Serenity Gardens might improve its chances of approval, and demonstrate its neighborliness, by moving the proposed crematory farther from concerned residents.

[Last modified September 17, 2006, 06:49:03]