The growing popularity of environmentally sensitive burials could pump life into Denver’s run-down Riverside Cemetery and help other Colorado graveyards struggling with rising costs.
In a green burial, the body isn’t embalmed, and metal or hardwood caskets are replaced with biodegradable coffins or even shrouds. No concrete vault liners or vaults are used.
At Riverside, where the famous and unknown lie in the weed-choked ground, the eco-friendly burials could fatten an endowment no longer sufficient for upkeep, said Hugh Graham, president of Friends of Historic Riverside Cemetery.
“There is some wild land at Riverside that could be used. That would be the hope, that it would generate some income,” said Kelly Briggs, president of Fairmount Cemetery, Riverside’s owner.
Briggs has discussed using the vacant Riverside land with Graham’s group, but Fairmount has not yet agreed to the idea.
Riverside’s $2.1 million endowment generates about $62,000 a year — not enough to water the property and properly care for the graves, Briggs said.
Natural burials have another attraction for those hoping to save Riverside: Having a native landscape around such gravesites makes perfect sense — and would drastically cut the need for water.
The natural burial movement began in Great Britain in 1993 and spread to the United States, where there are at least 10 green burial cemeteries, according to the Centre for Natural Burial.
Colorado Springs also is considering opening two city-owned graveyards — Evergreen and Fairview — to green burials, said the city’s cemetery manager, Will DeBoer.
The two cemeteries need at least $3.5 million in repairs, and with fuel and other costs rising, the budget is stretched, DeBoer said.
“We spend upwards of $150,000 a year on just water. It is big bucks,” he said. “This would trim costs because we wouldn’t have to irrigate that section depending on the rain, and we would mow less.”
The Colorado Springs City Council is considering the proposal, and DeBoer said he hopes to have green burials at the cemeteries by the end of next year, he said.
Unlike Evergreen and Fairview, where plots can still be purchased, Riverside sold its last grave in 2005.
Those who bought their plots before that can still get tucked away in Riverside’s soil. But Fairmount stopped watering in 2003, and 100-year-old trees are dead and dying. The once-lush carpet of grass is now barren, dust-choked and brown.
Friends of Riverside is searching for other ways to rejuvenate the graveyard in addition to natural burials.
The Greenway Foundation, which is leading the effort to build a greenbelt along the South Platte River from Cuernavaca Park to Riverside’s northern border, hopes to include some piece of the cemetery, said the foundation’s executive director, Jeff Shoemaker.
The foundation is working on the details, he said, “but we are looking at ways to preserve and protect and enhance Riverside.”
Strained relationship
The relationship between Fairmount and those who love Riverside, many of whom have family buried there, has been strained and marked by suspicion.
“There is something wrong there,” said Marti Kucharski, who has hired a lawyer to look through Fairmount’s books and assure the Riverside endowment isn’t being misused.
Kucharski has four relatives buried in Riverside; when she visits the graves, she said, she finds them covered with weeds. Fairmount has turned down offers from some who are willing to spruce up the cemetery at no charge. Briggs said volunteers working in the cemetery could raise liability and other issues.
Graham wants to assess what is needed in the cemetery while working to repair the relationship with Fairmount.
“Our purpose is to go beyond a lot of the past bad blood and find a way to move forward,” he said.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
