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Charlestown council reviews proposed home-burial ordinance, agrees to add technical setbacks and return cleaned draft
Summary
Councilors discussed a proposed ordinance to allow family home burials with specified setbacks, survey and plan standards, and a fees/resolution mechanism; the solicitor will return a reformatted draft incorporating recommendations from the town's wastewater specialist.
The Charlestown Town Council reviewed a draft ordinance to add a chapter on family home burials (proposed amendment to chapter 130) and directed the solicitor to reformat and return the draft with specific setback and plan requirements.
Councilors discussed substantive technical standards recommended by the town’s wastewater management specialist, Matt Dowling, which the council agreed should be included in the ordinance language if the home‑burial code moves forward. Dowling’s memo (dated Jan. 8) recommends setbacks including 400 feet from potable wells, 200 feet from subsurface drains, 200 feet from salt‑pond/coastal shoreline features and 50 feet from watercourses; the council asked that those numbers be added into the draft.
Why it matters: the draft would allow ground family burials on private property under specified conditions and recordation standards. Councilors worked through policy questions including whether to allow above‑ground vaults or mausoleums (several councilors preferred to exclude them), how to structure plan‑of‑survey requirements, minimum lot‑size considerations, and whether to set fees or fines by council resolution.
Key clarifications included: the council agreed to exclude above‑ground mausoleums from the family‑burial definition; to include Dowling’s setback recommendations (the Jan. 8 memo’s items 1.a–d and related criteria); and to keep animal/pet burials out of the regulation by defining “human remains” in the draft. The draft leaves fees to be set later by council resolution; members discussed keeping civil penalties below state maxima and emphasized the ordinance should not inadvertently encourage unpermitted burials by setting trivial fines.
Outcome: the council did not adopt the ordinance at the Jan. 27 meeting. Attorney Ruggiero will reformat the draft to incorporate the agreed technical standards, renumber sections so that the plan‑of‑survey and the 11 technical criteria appear in a single, clear list, and return the revised draft at a future meeting for further consideration and public hearing scheduling.
