What to do with all those dead people?

Editor's note: News12 ran a story on Monday about environmentalists protesting the Diocese of Rockville Centre's decision to use property it owns as a cemetery. See the story at the end of this piece for more details.

By Michael Watt

When I first saw about a dozen or so people, led by Dick Amper and Adrienne Esposito, on the news protesting outside the Diocese of Rockville Centre about the Church’s plans to use its property in Old Westbury as a cemetery I thought, “these people have finally gone too far.”

Then, being a fair and open-minded fellow, I thought about it some more and realized that the protestors had a point. It would be a sin to allow Long Island’s deceased a rightful resting place.

Look at the facts. Cemetery proponents argue that dead people do not produce those nefarious school children who wreak havoc on local school districts. Of course they don’t. But what about the families of the dead people? They have children, and more often than not those families drive through local neighborhoods to get to the cemetery. Is the Old Westbury school district ready to run the risk of dozens of families deciding Old Westbury might be a nice place to raise a family as they drive through town on the way to the cemetery?

And what about those funeral processions? Sometimes as many as two dozen cars can be seen following a gas-guzzling limousine and a hearse. Most of those cars have only one or two people in them, tops. And the real problems start once those processions get to the cemetery. Noise-level studies have shown that grieving families at grave-sites, especially the “ethnics” from Queens, generate enough of a racket to interfere with the mating habits of the hoot-eared grey spotted owl. And the less said about the Irish and THEIR funerals, the better.

The protestors also have legitimate concerns about over-crowding. Surveys show that the 65 and over crowd is the fastest growing segment of Long Island’s population. Where are they going to go? To the cemetery no doubt, at least eventually. And don’t let that “senior citizens make the best residents” argument fool you. Go to any cemetery on Long Island and there is a good chance you will find individuals under the age of 65. Try as you might, there’s no realistic way to enforce the “nobody under 65 is allowed to die” rule.

Now, a case could be made for the need to honor those American men and women who saved the world for democracy by winning World War II. But was winning World War II really such a great thing? The Germans are wonderful when it comes to preserving open space – you can travel for miles in Germany and see nothing but beautiful vistas interrupted only by the occasional castle. And does anyone do more with less space than the Japanese? Besides, when those same “veterans” were done “winning” the war, the vast majority of them then came to Long Island and plowed over the beautiful potato farms of Levittown for their own selfish needs. Need we remind anyone of all the construction that had to happen to accommodate those people?

If not cemeteries, then what? We could advocate for cremation, but that creates a whole new problem: what to do with all that ash. We could ship it to Brookhaven but that might undercut the town of Babylon’s price points at its landfill. Perhaps we could put the deceased into those satellites that are constantly being shot into space. Wouldn’t that be a creative use of all that available space in those rockets?

The irony in all this is that if the protestors had their way only the people who already have their houses on Long Island would be allowed to live here. It almost doesn’t matter where they get buried because their descendants will have moved to other regions and therefore unable to visit them when they’re gone anyway.

Opponents call Old Westbury cemetery a grave mistake

02/16/09) OLD WESTBURY - Environmentalists are lining up against a plan to build a 97-acre cemetery in Old Westbury, saying it’s dangerous to put grave sites over the drinking supply.
The Catholic Church wants to build a new 42,000-plot cemetery on land located between Hitchcock Lane and Powell's Lane off Jericho Turnpike in Old Westbury.

Adrienne Esposito, of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, says the proposed cemetery is within the state-designated ground water protection area. She says corpses and coffins leak bacteria and lethal toxins like formaldehyde, which ultimately will end up in the water supply.

The diocese claims the environmentalists don't understand the chemistry involved, and have no proof that toxins will leak.

The Village of Old Westbury will hold a public hearing about the proposed cemetery on Feb. 23.

Public Hearing
Monday, February 23
7 p.m.
Old Westbury Village Hall
1 Store Hill Road
Old Westbury, NY 11568