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Trustees weigh formal rules for ‘green burials’ including permanence and casket requirements
Summary
The Michigan City Board of Cemetery Trustees reviewed a draft green-burial policy that would make green interments permanent, limit locations to designated sections, require rigid caskets or funeral-home handling, and mandate use of a named funeral home; the board asked for a map and pricing before final action.
Jeff, the cemetery superintendent, presented a draft policy for green burials and walked trustees through proposed rules intended to govern how the city will offer the service.
"1st of all, 1st rule, a green burial is permanent. The grave owner agrees to forfeit any future rights of disinterment excluding any court ordered explanation," Jeff said, describing a core restriction in the draft. He said the board plans to confine green burials to limited sections of the Serenity Garden or to future locations the board designates and that a site map and pricing will be presented at the next meeting.
Jeff specified technical and operational requirements intended to protect staff and infrastructure: inverted concrete "butter-dish" style vaults for interments, the use of rigid caskets so cemetery equipment can safely lower remains, and a rule that funeral homes are responsible for loading remains if a rigid casket is not used. "At no time will any Michigan City Cemetery Department employee be required to touch or handle a body not contained in a rigid casket," Jeff said.
The draft also proposed that green-burial interments be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis and that the funeral home Lisonbee Funeral Home be used for such interments. Jeff said he would contact other cemeteries that offer green burials to collect any existing written rules, and he expects to have additions to the draft before the next meeting.
Trustees asked practical questions. Board member Roxanne asked whether disinterments had been an issue historically; Jeff said he and other secretaries had not encountered requests for disinterment but that the rule is intended to prevent a domino effect of later exceptions. Trustees also requested a map of the proposed Serenity Garden section so they could better evaluate the draft's spatial limits.
The board did not take final action on the draft. Jeff said he will return with a marked-up policy, a map of the proposed green-burial area and proposed pricing at a future meeting.
