What the Neighbors Are Doing: City Council Votes for Crematoriums

Wondering what our neighbors are up to this week?

The Manassas City Council voted this week to allow a local funeral home to add a crematorium for both humans and pets on its premises, according to a recent report on InsideNova.com. 

The vote comes over two months after the agenda item requesting a special use permit that would allow to build and operate a crematory on its property on Center Street first came before council. Council continued to delay the vote  so the city could gather more information on mercury emissions and hear from citizens after a series of public hearings on the topic prompted at least about the safety surrounding mercury emissions. Council Members also received emails from additional residents expressing concern over mercury.

Mercury is vaporized and emitted as an odorless, invisible gas during cremation when silver amalgam tooth fillings are incinerated.

"From the research that I've done, and the things I've learned, the EPA doesn't actually have a state or federal regulation for mercury emissions, If there is not a recognized safe level, then I'm not sure as to what the annual inspections will be monitoring for or what the air discharge permit is based on," Lee Square resident Abby Femino told city council during a Feb. 28 public hearing. Her neighborhood sits about 275 feet from the proposed crematorium site. Femino said she researched that the last report by the EPA on mercury emissions by a crematory is over 15 years old and the mercury emissions from cremation is 11 times more than the EPA indicates.

But lawyers for the Pierce Funeral Home in Manassas have said there remains a lack of good empirical data on mercury emissions as it pertains to the operating of a crematorium because it is something that is not on the Environment Protection Agency's (EPA) radar due to very low levels and the lack of a hazard presented.

in an effort to find out just how much mercury would be going into the atmosphere should the human and pet crematories be built and operated. Their findings indicated that the amount of mercury emissions being emitted into the environment from the proposed crematories would be almost 100 times less that than that allowed by the state.

Despite some speculation that the study should have been conducted by an outside agency, Mayor Harry J. (Hal) Parrish ll issued the tie-breaking vote to allow the special permit, the report said.

Council Members Marc  Aveni, Andrew Harrover and Sheryl Bass voted against the special use permit while members Mark Wolfe, Steven Randolph and Jonathan Way voted for it.

Do you agree with the decision to allow the crematoriums for pets and humans to be built and operated on the grounds of Pierce Funeral Home? Tell us in the comments.