Ten-Year Struggle to Build a New York City Crematory
When I first started at St. Michael’s Cemetery in Queens, N.Y., the furthest thing from my mind was building a crematory. I was hired in June of 1996 as an operations manager. My background was in horticulture. I was an area manager for 220 acres of Central park in Manhattan, N.Y. and prior to that, I was the head groundskeeper for the Syracuse Chiefs AAA baseball team in the Toronto Blue Jays organization. It was my responsibility to transform the cemetery’s landscape into a more-attractive, garden-like setting while motivating a tough union workforce to achieve better results in an active cemetery. I had the strong support of the former cemetery director and together, the entire St. Michael’s staff made great strides towards beautifying the cemetery. At the time, the former executive director of the church and cemetery had plans to build a crematory at St. Michael’s Cemetery. Recently, I was reviewing old crematory records and found an Industrial Equipment and Engineering Co. estimate to install retorts that was dated November 1995 (IEE was later purchased by Matthews Cremation Division). The estimate warned that current New York City laws require the installation of scrubbing units for the stacks when installing a crematory. It stated that the cost of installing the scrubbing units equals the cost of the actual cremation equipment itself. We were told that scrubbers do not reduce emissions and create other hazards such as liquid waste. St. Michael’s took this information and began to develop a feasibility study on building and operating a crematory. After extensive research, attending CANA conferences, hiring an architect and acquiring estimates for cremation equipment, St. Michael’s management received approval from the Church Vestry to build a crematory in October 1996.
Emissions Test Proves Invaluable
I was inexperienced with the process, having just started my position and keeping busy with cemetery issues. In early 1997, we received unanimous approval from the local community board to proceed with the project. Everything was moving quickly until management hired an engineer and an attorney to petition the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to waive the scrubber requirement for our crematory installation. The process came to a screeching halt. The problem was that a crematory had not been built in New York City since 1971 and naturally, the city did not have someone employed who was a cremation expert. To obtain a waived scrubber installation, we needed to provide strong evidence that it was not required. After little to no progress for over a year, we caught a break. At the time, CANA- led by Paul Rahill of Matthews Cremation Division, in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency- conducted emission tests at The Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, N.Y. The tests produced strong evidence that crematory equipment is capable of low emissions without the use of scrubbers.
Road to Permits
In January 2000, a management shift at St. Michael’s Cemetery put me in charge of planning to build the crematory. I realized we were overspending for outside project consultants. I also wasn’t in favor of the design- wanting a larger chapel to service the area’s various religious and ethnic groups. Of course changing the design and working directly with the manufacturer caused more delays in the process. We finalized a design, put the project to bid and chose a contractor to build the structure that would accommodate cremation equipment and a chapel for services. We now had to obtain all required permits from New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), New York City Buildings Department and we still needed the New York City DEP to waive the scrubber requirement. We also needed a larger gas line and a gas booster to provide enough fuel for the cremation.
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