Natural burial site dead in the water

Development of a natural burial cemetery for Palmerston North, a project that has been on the city council’s work list for nearly eight years, has been delayed again while a suitable site is sought.

The city council’s draft budget for 2017-18 proposes deferring a $16,000 budget that was earmarked for spending in the coming financial year.

The key problem is the favoured Kelvin Grove Cemetery location for natural burials has been found to be unsuitable for the natural decomposition process.

The council chose Kelvin Grove by a narrow 8-7 vote in late 2015 in preference to a proposal to develop a cemetery at Mccraes Bush near Ashhurst that was strongly resisted by neighbours.

The choice was criticised by advocates, and condemned by former city councillor Chris Teosherrell, who said attempting natural burials next to the traditional cemetery was simply ‘‘green-washing’’.

Natural burials are carried out in a shallow grave, with no embalming of the body, no treated timber caskets, and no permanent memorial stones, and ideally, among trees and bush.

City council asset officer Brian Way said councillors had recently accepted that the soils at Kelvin Grove were not suitable.

‘‘It’s all clay and heavy soils and it gets water logged.’’

There was a real risk, especially when it was wet, that bodies would be lowered into water, and the natural decomposition process would not work even if looser soils were added to the mix.

The council has already changed its Cemeteries and Crematorium Bylaw to allow natural graves that were shallower than the standard ‘‘six feet under’’ that applied to traditional burials.

But Way said even though it would be legal to carry out natural burials, it was unlikely to be successful. The search was now on for another location that could be developed.

Way said a handful of sites around the city had been identified, but staff were a long way off assessing and recommending any of them as potentially suitable.

Meantime, recent trends in burial and cremation patterns have shown cremations are about three times as popular as burials.

In 2015-16 the number of burials (less than 150) was 10 per cent below the 10-year average, and cremation numbers (about 450) were 10 per cent above.

Way said part of that could be explained by comparative costs.

Under new fees and charges recommended to take effect from July 1, a single adult burial plot would be $2714, with a basic interment fee of $891 – a total of $3605. Cremation, including a full service in the chapel, would cost $712, and a general ash burial plot would cost $589 – a total of $1301.

But Way said the figures for the last year should not be read as an accelerating trend. The council had performed a higher number of cremations because another cremator outside the city had been out of action for maintenance, and Kelvin Grove had accepted many out-of-district customers.