The bill, H.3, is set to hit the House floor Tuesday for debate, after clearing the House Committee on General, Housing and Military Affairs by an 11-0 vote.
The measure would permit burials at a depth of at least 3½ feet, compared with the current 5-foot state requirement.
“What we’re trying to do is just get the law changed to allow for the option of burial at 3½ feet deep,” said Michelle Acciavatti, a green burial advocate from Montpelier. “We just want to add an option.”
The bill follows legislation in 2015 that approved “green cemeteries,” allowing for “natural burials” of bodies without vaults, embalming or caskets made of nonbiodegradable materials such as metal.
A green burial, Acciavatti said, minimizes impacts on the environment that can come from concrete vaults and embalming chemicals, and maximizes the positive effects, allowing for rapid decomposition and the recycling of nutrients back into the soil.
Even the shroud or coffin in a green burial is biodegradable, she said, adding that no embalming fluid is used on the body.
At the current required depth of 5 feet in Vermont, Acciavatti said, conditions are far from optimal, missing, among other factors, heat and oxygen needed for decomposition.
At a depth of 3½ feet, she said, the conditions are much better, providing the necessary heat and oxygen as well as insect and microbial activity, to achieve rapid decomposition and the return of nutrients back to the soil.
In Vermont, Acciavatti said, given the soil and water conditions, proper siting for carrying out a green burial would be an important factor in determining where they could take place. “It may not be possible in every cemetery,” she added.
Acciavatti, who describes herself as an end-of-life specialist, has given presentations around the state dealing with death, from providing information on resources available for home hospice care to how to set in place burial directives.
The impetus for the bill came in August, when Acciavatti said she was giving a presentation in Montpelier and was approached by Jennifer Whitman, a cemetery commissioner from Calais.
Whitman told Acciavatti a couple of people had asked her about green burials and she wanted more information about them.
Acciavatti said they talked and she also met with the Cemetery Commission in Calais, explaining the green burial concept. They also talked about the current state requirement of a depth of 5 feet.
Randy Koch, a Calais Cemetery Commission member, said after hearing from Acciavatti, and with more and more people in recent months asking him about green burials, the panel members sought the proposed change in law.
The cemetery commissioners approached their local lawmaker, Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, who agreed to sponsor the bill.
“People realized we needed a legislative change to resolve the burial depth issue,” said Ancel. “I’m really hopeful it passes the House, gets a good hearing in the Senate, and becomes law.”
While the bill sailed through the House committee, after testimony that included cemetery commissioners and a University of Vermont soil expert, the panel did hear a voice of dissent.
Patrick Healy, president of the Vermont Cemetery Association, testified Friday that he has sent an email to his organization’s roughly three dozen members, urging them to contact their lawmakers and ask that they vote against the bill.
At least, he added, at this point.
“We’re really not for it, we’re really not against, what I want to know are the logistics of it,” said Healy, director of the Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier. “We’re trying to figure out what problems people have had.”
And, he added, “Show me, show me how it’s done.”
Healy said he has a range of concerns, including what to do about the possible smell coming from the burial sites and how to carry out such a green burial in winter, or in other adverse conditions.
“Until I see it,” he said, “I don’t believe it’s the romantic burial that these people are pushing.”
If the bill passes, he said, he also is worried the Legislature at a later session will require that all cemeteries offer “green burials” at a 3½ foot depth.
“We don’t want to be told we have to do green burials,” he said. “We just want to go slow with it. … We want to get it right.”
Acciavatti said green cemetery operators in New York and Maine have offered to meet with Healy and others to share more information.
As for winter, she said, when conditions don’t allow for burials, bodies could be kept in a receiving vault if a cemetery has one and it stays cool enough. However, if that’s not the case, she said, another option is to ask a funeral home to store a body until conditions allow for a burial.
Acciavatti said soil works as a filter to help suppress odors, adding that the smell would hardly be noticed by a person or a scavenging animal. More than half the states in the country allow burials at a depth of at least 3½ feet, she said, with no widespread problems reported.
Koch, the Calais cemetery commissioner, said if the bill is approved, he wasn’t sure how many people would take advantage of it. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it really caught on,” he said.
