Oral arguments slated for March in appeal over proposed crematory on York Road in North Baltimore

Dan Belson, Baltimore Sun
·3 min read

As justices consider whether a Baltimore zoning board was correct in deciding a crematory could be built at a York Road funeral home, lawyers were asked Wednesday to determine when they can argue before Maryland’s intermediate appellate court.

The notice stating that oral arguments were slated for March came ahead of a Wednesday evening update from state environmental regulators, who have been waiting over the past three years to review whether to issue a construction permit to Vaughn Greene Funeral Services for the planned crematory.

Residents have been battling the funeral home’s plans to install a crematory facility, which would be used to cremate human remains from its four locations, in the garage of its location on York Road, located on the border of the Radnor-Winston and Winston-Govans neighborhoods.

Along with several officials, community members opposed to the facility donned yellow and carried signs protesting the crematory at the meeting. The funeral home applied to the Maryland Department of the Environment for a permit to build in 2020.

In a legal brief filed in October to the Appellate Court of Maryland, an attorney representing several community groups alleged that Baltimore’s law banning incinerators effectively bans crematories. Attorney Lauren DiMartino argued that the city’s zoning appeals board and a Baltimore Circuit Court judge both misinterpreted the law when reviewing the funeral home’s plans as well as a subsequent appeal, and that the board strayed from its duty to protect the community from pollution.

The neighborhood partnership and its supporters, including City Councilman Mark Conway, have argued that the facility should not be placed in a densely populated neighborhood already suffering from the effects of pollution.

“The standard of law for zoning in Maryland is not — and cannot be — that because communities in Baltimore’s ‘Black Butterfly’ are already replete with polluting businesses, more are allowed,” the brief says, calling the board’s decision and Baltimore Circuit Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill’s affirmation of it “incorrect, immoral and in direct conflict with the intent” of city laws.

The funeral home, in its brief, pointed to other city zoning laws that define funeral homes as facilities that can include crematories, noting that the law banning incinerators applies to certain devices that dispose of solid waste, not necessarily human remains. That difference shows a “strong presumption” that legislators intended for crematories to be allowed in city limits, attorney Howard Schulman wrote in the brief.

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Neither lawyer, nor Vaughn Greene immediately returned requests for comment.

Cremation is becoming increasingly preferred on a national scale, including in Baltimore, a statistic the funeral home points to as representing their need to build a crematory.

Because the Baltimore Circuit Court denied the residents’ motion for a stay this summer, the appeals entanglement didn’t stop the environment department from starting their permitting process.

The environmental regulators, who were waiting on zoning officials to decide before reviewing the crematory’s construction permit, detailed the process to residents at their Wednesday meeting at a church near the funeral home.

The agency said a “thorough technical review of the permit application to determine the air quality impacts from the proposed human crematory is underway,” and regulators will present their findings at a public hearing if they determine the crematory will meet all standards. When the public hearing will take place is unclear.