GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—A college’s plan to place a so-called “body farm” of decomposing human corpses for study near a growing residential neighborhood is irking residents who fear they’ll be close to odors and disease.
Officials at Mesa State College in western Colorado say they understand residents’ concerns and they’re trying to reassure them that they have nothing to worry about. College officials say the facility would help forensics students prepare for criminal investigations by studying donated bodies to see how they decompose.
It would be the first “body farm” in the region and one of a handful in the country.
John Redifer, head of the Mesa State Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, said the “natural inclination of people is to react to the most grisly things” when they don’t know how body farms operate.
He told The (Grand Junction) Daily Sentinel that bodies with communicable diseases would not be accepted and that odor would not be a problem because the facility would not have a lot of bodies.
The facility would be in a fenced-in area within a 154-acre parcel owned by the college in the Pear Park neighborhood east of Grand Junction, Redifer said. The neighborhood had more than 4,300 homes in 2004 and hundreds more have been built since then. A date has not been released of when the facility would be up and running but Redifer said the location would be temporary. After a few years, the facility would be moved to a new, permanent location.
Bob Carpendale, who lives a couple of hundred yards from the proposed temporary site, said he laughed when a friend first told him of the idea a couple of months ago.
“I ha-ha-ed him and said nobody would put a body farm in a residential area,” Carpendale said. “I think it’s disgusting to put it right across the street from us, if not unsanitary.”
Other residents said they worry their homes’ values will decrease.
The first body farm was built 38 years ago at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Other farms followed in Texas and North Carolina.
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Information from: The Daily Sentinel,
