Building a crematory in Lexington would not be financially viable due to low demand for the service, a town committee’s majority voting bloc said in a report released last week. The committee voted 4-2 against building a crematory at Westview Cemetery at this time.
The 55-page document includes reports prepared by committee members on each side of the issue. The two reports contradict each other at times.
The majority report says the facility’s potential revenue would not be enough to cover the estimated annual operational costs.
“Even if 100% of Lexington residents chose cremation, and if 100% of those cremations were conducted at a future Westview facility, total annual revenues from those cremations would be less than $150,000,” according to the majority report. The report estimates that operations alone would cost $400,000 a year, not including capital costs and maintenance.
An average of 313 Lexington residents die each year. The report estimates that about 100 would choose cremation at Westview.
Families of many cultural and religious backgrounds choose cremation, but the practice is especially important for some members of Lexington’s growing South Asian community. While many facilities in the Boston area provide cremation services, they don’t accommodate all end-of-life rituals that are essential to some Hindus and people of other Dharmic faiths. This has led to residents traveling to New Hampshire for this service.
Members of the majority looked at other facilities like the nearby Mount Auburn Cemetery’s crematory and determined that they can accommodate Lexington’s needs. The facility has a glass-walled section of the chapel designed to accommodate some aspects of traditional Dharmic-faith rituals including witnessing the cremation, but does not permit traditional havan ceremonies, which include an open flame.
Environmental impacts and legal roadblocks also influenced the majority’s decision. Their report cites several authorization requirements needed to build a facility at Westview.
“No local, state, or federal ‘environmental standards’ exist for crematory emissions,” the report said. “Regulations established for one crematory may not be appropriate for another.”
The majority report also includes concerns about the cost of mitigating vaporized mercury and toxins, as well as the fuel use of a crematory that would not operate full-time.
Both sides agree that the demand for cremations has risen in recent years. The minority voting bloc’s answer is to develop a local crematory. Their report estimates that the rise in demand for cremations would stretch the capacity of state facilities, resulting in more than two times the industry standard number of cremations.
Members of the minority disagreed with various points in the majority report. The minority report addresses the majority’s financial concerns by applying the model of Duxbury’s Mayflower Cemetery to a facility at Westview. Based on Duxbury’s numbers, a Westview crematory would break even on operating costs if it had 1.5 full-time equivalent employees and priced the service properly.
The minority acknowledged the majority’s environmental concerns but pointed to modern filtration systems as a potential solution. Their report says traditional burials can impose greater ecological burdens than cremation.
“People pointed out that cremations are generally considered safer, environmentally better than traditional burials,” said committee meeting observer Sandeep Patel in an interview. “And some members just said, ‘Oh, that’s not our mandate. We just look at the impact of cremations in isolation.’”
The minority said Lexington needs a crematory of its own and “respectfully disagrees” with the majority report’s conclusions.
The majority proposed several alternatives, including working with other end-of-life facilities to see if they could meet residents’ needs.
“Building another crematory in the region is the wrong solution to the right problem,” the majority report said. “We don’t need a new crematory; we need an existing crematory to permit an open flame at a witnessed cremation.”
This story was written by a journalism student in BU’s Newsroom program, a partnership between the university, The Lexington Observer and other news organizations in the Boston area.