O’Scanlon joins Oceanport’s fight against crematorium
Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon said he supports the Borough of Oceanport’s efforts to prevent a crematorium from being built in a residential neighborhood.
“I am concerned with the process and the minimal amount of communication,” said O’Scanlon. “The fact that the only public notification of this pending permit was published in the Home News Tribune, which is not even distributed in the Borough, is hardly adequate notice.”
“I have seconded the municipal request for a public hearing so that all the facets of this permit request can be discussed and the residents have an opportunity to voice their concerns,” O’Scanlon explained. “Projects such as this should never be implemented behind closed doors. I plan on remaining involved in this issue to see that all concerns are addressed.”
Oceanport Borough Administrator John Bennett was surprised last week when he was informed by the Department of Environmental Protection that Woodbine Cemetery had applied for an Air Pollution Control permit. As Acting Governor in 2002, Bennett signed legislation that required crematoriums be approved by the governing bodies of the municipalities where they were proposed. That legislation was repealed in 2011. The current law gives the New Jersey Cemetery Board the authority to approve crematorium construction permits. The majority of the Cemetery Board is comprised of owners or managers of cemeteries.
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I hate the smell of burning dead people in the morning.
Seriously though the law was repealed just to avoid this type of baseless Nimbyism.
Baseless my ass, there are genuine environmental, air quality, and process concerns here. Not to mention the fact this would be smack in the middle of a residential area, with a county park and a school within a few hundres yards.
@”There are genuine environmental, air quality, and process concerns.”
What is the DEP’s determination on crematoriums? Or maybe they’re still just too darned busy trying to clean up Superfund sites.
Act I/Setup: A friend of mine built a tikibar in his backyard beside his pool. Despite causing no negative damage, the neighbor complained, because it was too close to the property line.
Act II/Confrontation: A friend of mine was forced by implied threat of fines from the building inspector to tear down his hand-built tikibar.
Act III/Resolution: A friend of mine was not permitted to spend his own money and his time improving his own property and worse had to hand-tear down his hand-built masterpiece. In the end of this tragedy, our good intentioned heroic builder is defeated. As the curtain closes, the evil neighbor is seen spying his next victim, the other neighbors.
And the moral of this story: TR is right: Nimbyism. Don’t like your neighbors? Move.
will go down!” – that is always the first argument..and, be honest, this is just averse to our sensibilities.. It’s NJ- as the nation, way too much government regulation of and intrusion on us, everywhere- the only thing we serfs are good for is more and more of our tax money,to pay for those who don’t pay, and for the electeds to promise out, for more votes..maybe if they really showed evidence that this would be some huge ratable, and actually made their property tax bill go down, for once, maybe it’d be more palatable- but, we all know, that just doesn’t/ won’t happen!!
Read the attached study regarding home values.
@ Corey, What are those ” there are genuine environmental, air quality, and process concerns”
@ Patty L – I did not see a link re: home values, can you repost?
To be honest, I am torn on this issue, primarily because I don’t like government intervention in businesses.
Second, I haven’t seen much on line regarding those “environmental concerns.” Filtration is apparently pretty good, especially burning at extremely hot temperatures with after chambers to re burn those gasses.
The only concern I see is mercury vapors from tooth fillings, but apparently it’s so little to be concerned about.
“As anticipated, the downwind samples contained a higher, though not significant, level of mercury. “Trigger concentrations” had been determined to evaluate level of soil contamination. These “trigger levels” ranged from low levels of 1mg/kg for human food producing soils to 20mg/kg levels that are deemed acceptable for children’s playgrounds. The concentration of mercury found in the crematory soil samples averaged less than .15 mg/kg, almost 7 times lower than that allowed for food production and more than 100 times lower than that allowed for children’s playgrounds. The soils were deemed uncontaminated even after 112,000 cremations and 40 years of operation.”
http://www.cremationassociation.org/?MercuryAndCremation
Coal fired plants seem to emit far more mercury than cremation
If you want to talk environmental concerns, burial seems to offer far more problems
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hal-stevens/blog/2009/04/01/cremation-or-burial-carbon-emissions-and-the-environment
Yeah, it’s a bit spooky, and it’s not the way I want to end up as I prefer being planted under some old oak tree.
That said, let’s not throw caution to the wind. I hope the planned operation gets a far review.
@True Story Re: “Our good intentioned heroic builder is defeated.”
Any halfway sentient homeowner in New Jersey will most vociferously explain the delights (?) of checking on zoning and planning ordinances before proceeding on any major project.
Tap on my name in that post & the article should display.
@Patty L.
Sorry, but a Penn State study about property values is not responsive to a question about the determinations of the NEW JERSEY Department of Environmental Protection.
Property values are ALWAYS affected by construction and new activities in the vicinity of given houses.