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Green burials voted down

A Bosnian tradition of simple interments arouses fears of Muslims, bacteria and crime.

By DAN DEWITT
Published February 13, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - In a cemetery planned for a 5-acre tract near Istachatta, the markers would have been wooden slabs or crosses.

The bodies would have been buried without embalming; the caskets were to be wooden boxes meant to decompose quickly.

That is Bosnian tradition, said Vedad Sakovic, president of the Bosnian Member Association. It also almost exactly matches the practices of the fast-growing green burial movement.

"It's totally natural," said Sue Hughes, a Brooksville Realtor who represented the Bosnian group before the Hernando County Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday. "This is a really big thing right now."

But residents of Deerhaven Estates, near the planned cemetery site, were not convinced.

Neither were members of the Planning and Zoning Commission, who voted unanimously against the cemetery, though the county Planning Department had recommended approval.

The residents had a long list of concerns.

Though the land - east of U.S. 41 and north of Lake Lindsey Road - is zoned as agricultural, it is divided into large residential lots.

If it were developed as a traditional cemetery, it would change the look of the rustic neighborhood; if it were too natural, it might not be properly maintained.

One neighbor said that because the cemetery was for Muslims, he would not be allowed to be buried in a cemetery just down the street from his house.

Richard Putman, a retired cemetery superintendent from South Florida, was one of several Deerhaven residents who said the cemetery would attract crime.

When he was working, he said, "I had constant calls from the police, maybe three, four times a week. It was mostly kids, and mostly vandalism, but we had other things, too."

Hughes and Sakovic said the cemetery would be barely noticeable because the land would be maintained just as it is now.

Burials would be infrequent, Sakovic said, because his Clearwater-based organization has only about 200 families, many of whom fled the former Yugoslavia during the civil war of the 1990s.

The organization includes members of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as Muslims, and so would the cemetery, he said.

The cemetery, he said, would be a way "to build a small piece of history in this country."

Planning commission member Anna Liisa Covell said she was worried the decaying bodies might allow bacteria into the aquifer.

But the Green Burial Council advocates interring bodies in cloth shrouds or pine boxes because it is far less damaging to the environment. The council has approved cemeteries in eight states and has been featured by several national media organizations, including Slate magazine, the Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio.

Embalmed bodies are loaded with chemicals, including formaldehyde, and the grounds are maintained with heavy applications of pesticides and herbicides, these stories have said.

With a natural burial, human bodies quickly decompose, in keeping with the quote from the Book of Common Prayer that is displayed on the top of the council's Web page:

"Ashes to ashes; dust to dust."

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or 352 754-6116.

[Last modified February 12, 2007, 22:41:09]