ATHENS, Ohio — The City of Athens plans to start a conservation cemetery, which will allow natural burials within the city limits while supporting land conservation.
Natural burials are done without using embalming fluid or burial vaults and typically involve only simple natural materials, such as a shroud for the body, and a wooden board to set the body into the ground.
The city plans to use about 80 acres located off Hope Drive that it previously purchased using Clean Ohio funds, Athens Service Safety Director Andy Stone said at the June 1 Athens City Council meeting.
Chiki told the Independent in an interview on May 28 that the city hopes the property will be ready for interments in nine months to a year.
Chiki said a conservation cemetery in the city would meet the growing demand for natural burials demonstrated by interest in the Southeast Ohio Natural Burial Working Group. He said many people are interested in death practices that are more ecologically friendly than conventional burial or cremation.
Additionally, the conservation cemetery would provide new options for people to be buried in Athens. Chiki said that although the West Union Cemetery is not full, options for new sales are very limited.
“It seems like there’s an interest and a need and we’re in a position to be able to potentially meet that,” Chiki said.
The land off Hope Drive must be conserved, according to easement restrictions in place through the Clean Ohio program, Stone said at the meeting. It’s home to an existing cemetery, the Mansfield Cemetery.
The city “recently rediscovered that the Mansfield Cemetery is on city-owned land in that tract,” Stone said.
“This is our ultimate goal, is to reactivate the Mansfield Cemetery and make the land that is in the immediate vicinity of that function as a conservation cemetery, which we think is something that would be sought after by both members of the Athens public and the people from the wider surrounding area, and it is in line with the conservation easement that is on that land,” Stone said.
Stone said the city is closing in on a contract with The Gathering Place, a peer recovery organization that serves adults with lived experience of a mental health issue or substance use disorder. The contract would allow the city to use funds it received through the One Ohio Opioid Fund to pay people in recovery to build trails on the land, which would “improve employability,” Chiki said in an email to the Independent.
The Independent emailed Ginger Schmalenberg, director of The Gathering Place, on June 3 for comment. At publication time, she had not yet responded. We will update this story when comments are received.
“Regardless of whether the conservation cemetery becomes a reality, the supervised program will be utilized at the site to first establish a walking/hiking route to the historic Mansfield Cemetery so that cleanup and restoration work can begin,” Chiki said.
One major task ahead for the city is an environmental review of the area.
“We got to really survey out the whole site, really understand the soils, understand the tree cover, understand protected species, understand invasive species, and work for truly conserving and restoring the site rather than just going in and starting to place bodies,” Chiki said in a phone interview.
He added in an email that the environmental review will help the city determine where burials can take place, and how many.
“There are certainly areas that are too steep, rocky, or have habitat that we would want to avoid,” he said in the email.
Additionally, the administration will need to continue to communicate its plans with the city’s Environment and Sustainability Commission, Chiki said, which it already has done in two meetings.
The city will also need to register the cemetery with the state, establish fees, rules, regulations, interment practices, and “logistics for doing the actual burials,” according to Chiki. Even marketing must be considered, he said.
Furthermore, the city will need “to include restrictions for use of funds/accounts for cemetery and conservation uses, and indigent and need based interments,” Chiki said.
The city will then partner with area funeral homes to spread word about the opportunity and build an interest list for those who intend to buy spaces. Finally, the city will conduct sales.
Much of that work will take place this summer, Chiki said, when two city interns will support the development of the project.
“This area of the state, Southeast Ohio, is ready for natural burial, especially because of the affordability crisis,” Wenda Sheard, a longtime advocate for natural burial and volunteer with the Southeast Ohio Natural Burial Working Group, told the Independent.
She said it is “heartbreaking” to watch people go into debt to bury their loved ones.
Asked about the prospect of a conservation cemetery in Athens, Sheard said, “I am thrilled, absolutely thrilled.”
