‘Water cremation’ is eco-friendly option offered in Conn.

Manchester — Fire and earth have been the options in Connecticut for what funeral directors call “disposition” of loved ones’ remains. Now, water is a choice.

Connecticut Aquamation, housed in the John F. Tierney Funeral Home in Manchester, already has reduced the bodies of 16 people in a liquid-filled chamber since launching the service on March 18, business founder Tom J. Tierney said Thursday.

Called alkaline hydrolysis, the process has been legal in the state for several years, but Tierney is the first funeral home director in Connecticut to perform the service. Demand appears to be growing, however, and an aquamation business based in Torrington is getting ready to launch with an option that Tierney is not offering.

Marcella Motola said the family planned for her husband, Craig Motola, who died of cancer on April 1 at age 64, to be cremated and made arrangements for that process last year.

When Tierney told her about the aquamation option the day after her husband passed, Motola said she knew it was the right choice. Craig Motola, a phone company lineman, was a conservationist who built one of the first Energy Star-rated homes in Connecticut, she said.

“When Tom said it was less of a carbon footprint, I said that’s exactly what my husband would want,” Motola said.

The process is similar wherever alkaline hydrolysis is done (first made legal in Minnesota in 2003, aquamation is permitted some 27 U.S. states now). The body, typically up to 500 pounds, is placed in a stainless steel tank and a solution of 95 percent water and 5 percent alkali, such as potassium hydroxide, is added. The solution is heated to about 200 degrees and kept moving over the body, accelerating the breakdown of organic materials.

After between nine and 14 hours in the cylindrical chamber, which Tierney bought for $210,000 from Indiana-based Bio-Response Solutions, the nontoxic wastewater is drained and the remains are dried, ground into a fine powder, and presented to the family. The same material as in fire cremation is left — calcium phosphate, the inorganic material in bones. Tierney does not have a fire crematorium and said he has no plans for one. He transports bodies to Connecticut Valley Crematory in Cromwell for people who want that service.

Aquamation, he said, is a greener alternative, with no emissions and much less energy used.

“The sustainablity aspect of it is huge,” Tierney said.

Sara Pizzanello said her husband, John D. Pizzanello of Manchester, was “a big fan of the beach,” so the aquamation option “brought me some comfort.” Pizzanello also decided to convert her husband’s ashes into stones, a service that Tierney began offering last year.

The plan is to leave a couple of the stones at the shore in Ogunquit, Maine, her husband’s favorite beach spot, Sara Pizzanello said. She said she also liked the green aspect of aquamation and that her husband’s body did not need to be transported from the Tierney Funeral Home.

“It’s all around good,” Pizzanello said.

Tierney, a 45-year-old married father of two daughters, is the third generation to run the funeral home on West Center Street, which his grandfather, John F. Tierney, started in 1956. John’s son and Tom J. Tierney’s father, Tom F. Tierney, 75, said he was skeptical about all aspects of aquamation, including the cost, technology, and public acceptance, when his son broached the idea.

“My mindset is, ‘Let’s just do it like we always have,’” he said. “I’m nowhere near as progressive as Tommy.”

But both he and his son say they were pleasantly surprised by families’ embrace of the method. Tom J. Tierney said four people already have prepaid for the service for themselves and he has been fielding calls from all over the state and as far away as Philadelphia.

“I’m the first one to do it (in Connecticut),” Tierney said. “I won’t be the last, that I know.”

“Alkaline hydrolysis is an emerging method of disposition that can appeal to those seeking a greener alternative to a burial or cremation,” Lionel J. Lessard Jr., president of the Connecticut Funeral Directors Association, said.

Not everyone is on board. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine last year issued a statement opposing both alkaline hydrolysis and terramation, or human composting, which Connecticut legislators have been working to legalize. The church largely approves of cremation, with limits on how ashes are treated, and the committee noted that bone ash also is left from alkaline hydrolysis.

“This procedure,” the panel wrote, “does not show adequate respect for the human body, nor express hope in the resurrection.”