No need for red light on 'green burials'

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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"Gravedigger," sings Dave Matthews, "when you dig my grave, could you make it shallow so that I can feel the rain?"

Not much chance of that these days. In Minnesota and the rest of the country, the increasingly prevalent custom is to choose cremation over burial of one's mortal remains. And among the minority who still choose to be laid bodily beneath the earth, most wind up embalmed and sealed inside a metal coffin that in turn is enclosed in a concrete vault. It would take a hard rain indeed to get through that, however deep the gravedigger has dug.

It's a perplexing and expensive practice, all the more puzzling because none of it is necessary. The requirement of a burial vault is a rule imposed by cemeteries, not a law made by states. The vault may offer some protection from water and the weight of heavy machinery passing overhead, but its chief advantage is that it prevents the ground from settling. Land with hundreds or thousands of depressions may pose a nettlesome problem for groundskeepers, but that hardly rises to the level of a compelling public interest.

Nor is embalming required, at least not until several days after death. The practice of embalming in the United States dates to the Civil War, when slain soldiers needed transportation home for burial. It received a substantial boost from the long funeral-train tour of the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, who reportedly was re-embalmed at every stop.

Embalming may be a wise choice for a national leader on postmortem display — whether in the short term, like Lincoln, or long term, like Mao or Lenin. But for most people, there is at least room to question the practice. Formaldehyde, one of the chemicals traditionally used in embalming, is a known carcinogen. That may not be a concern to the deceased but should certainly concern the practitioner who employs it.

The expense of a traditional funeral gives people plenty of reason to seek out cheaper, simpler options. For those who find comfort in the idea of returning to the earth — of pushing up daisies, so to speak — the alternative that naturally comes to mind is a green burial. That is, the interment of a body without toxic embalming, with no metal jewelry, with only a wooden or wicker coffin or no coffin at all, in a landscape that is free of herbicides or other chemicals.

Certain faith communities practice green burials as a matter of tradition, and green burials can happen in selected areas of conventional cemeteries. But the demand for alternative burial options is likely to outstrip that limited supply.

So it is difficult to fathom why the Minnesota Legislature chose to enact a last-minute moratorium on the establishment of new cemeteries that offer green burials. The measure, part of an omnibus health bill that was passed near midnight before the last day of the session, puts a two-year hold on new green cemeteries and obliges the state Health Department to study possible hazards to water quality and public health.

The moratorium was sponsored by Sen. Jason Rarick, R-Pine City, some of whose constituents had been trying without success to forestall the establishment of a green cemetery in Blackhoof Township. Press reports said the cemetery's prospective neighbors were concerned that a natural cemetery might pollute their drinking water or attract scavenger animals that would dig up cadavers.

A more credible objection was voiced by a man who said that if he'd wanted to live next to a cemetery, he'd have bought land next to one. But at least some residents were reported to have expressed opposition to possible Muslim burials.

Rarick has said he has no interest in stopping green burials but merely wants to establish guidelines for cemeteries to follow. But the statewide moratorium is an overly broad remedy to this one locality's concerns.

On Tuesday morning an editorial writer paid a visit to Prairie Oaks Memorial Eco Gardens, a green cemetery in Inver Grove Heights. In the company of Jon Weber, the cemetery's manager, he strolled among a few of the cemetery's occupied graves. From a distance, the flat gravestones were barely visible. If not for the sign next to the driveway, it would have been easy not to notice that this was a cemetery at all.

The Legislature's moratorium has no effect on existing cemeteries like Prairie Oaks. But in this modest place, humble in its attitude toward nature and subtle in its practices of interment, it's natural to wonder: What problem was this moratorium supposed to solve?