Tiverton residents don't want a crematorium on Main Road. Why it might get built anyway.

TIVERTON — Over a dozen Tiverton residents spoke up Tuesday night against a proposed crematorium to be built on the town’s main thoroughfare: Main Road. They pointed to the proximity of residential homes and bus stops and the possibility of emissions as reasons they are concerned about the project.

However, despite the protests, if the landowner wants a crematorium on the property, there’s little the town can do without overhauling its zoning code.

“Whether the Planning Board likes it or not, we have no choice but to permit a crematorium in this particular zone because our zoning ordinance governs us,” Planning Board chair Stuart Hardy said Tuesday. “Should it be there? That’s another discussion. We’re not having that tonight…Our zoning ordinance is out of date, it’s badly broken, it’s inadequate, it’s badly broken, it does not protect the town of Tiverton based on the town’s own Comprehensive Community Plan and the town never seems to find the money to hire the experts to clean up the mess that we call our zoning ordinance.”

Why is a crematorium proposed for Tiverton?

Funeral Director Jonathan Ferriera and his team came before the Tiverton Planning Board on Tuesday evening to detail his plans to build a 2,960-square-foot crematorium with a chapel at 730 Main Road in Tiverton. The land, purchased in 2022 for $265,000, sits in a general commercial district, where funeral homes and crematoriums are allowed by right, meaning the applicants do not have to acquire special permission to build that type of business there.

Ferriera told the board and members of the public present that evening the building is designed to look as unassuming as possible and, with the state-of-the-art equipment they plan to install inside the building, passersby would not be able to see or smell smoke coming from the building’s chimney.

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“I know a majority of Tiverton residents use funeral homes over the line in Fall River or Westport, or they go over the bridge to Portsmouth or Newport,” Ferriera said. “In itself and there’s nothing wrong with that, but because of Massachusetts state laws, when you go to a Massachusetts funeral home for cremation, odds are you’re getting sent to Providence, you’re getting sent to Fairhaven, with third-party crematories, so this crematory would allow Tiverton residents who desire a simple cremation the best possible value by not paying to have third party crematories. Everything is done locally here without having to leave Tiverton.”

There is another crematorium in Tiverton, AA Crematory at 19 Rock St. although it is unclear whether the owner, A.F. Almeida & Son Funeral Home, still operates the crematorium. Other than AA Crematory, there are only 13 other crematoria throughout Rhode Island, and only one other in Newport County: Atlantic Cremation Services Inc. in Portsmouth.

Opposition: 'It was unsettling to people to have to smell burning remains'

Despite being zoned as General Commercial, the proposed property for the crematorium abuts several residential buildings. Tiverton resident Robert Fazzina’s two-family home sits about 62 feet east of their shared property border, and three residential homes sit just across the street from the proposed property. Fazzina and several other residents spoke to the board at its Tuesday meeting to express their concerns about the project, most of them worried about the possible air pollution the crematorium might introduce to the nearby residential neighborhoods.

Many residents also criticized the rendering of the building as provided to the Planning Board by the applicant because it had no visible chimney, despite the applicant admitting a chimney would be present.

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“There’s your property line, there’s my house,” Fazzina said, pointing to the large photographs of his property he brought to the meeting. “The second story window is my grandson’s bedroom. You’re going to put a 30-inch stack on that building underneath his bedroom window?”

Emissions from crematoria are not regulated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as emissions from other incinerators are, and therefore are not tracked as closely. According to a field inquiry published by the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health in Canada, crematoria can emit combustion gasses, such as carbon monoxide, particulate matter and fine dust, organic pollutants and heavy metals, such as mercury, which comes from the burning of dental fillings or from incinerating caskets. It notes the emissions of most concern are certain organic pollutants (polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins) and mercury, both of which are known to be toxic to humans and can bioaccumulate in tissue. However, it states the level of exposure to these pollutants caused by crematoria has not been widely studied.

The inquiry goes on to state “the relative contribution of an individual crematorium to local air pollution will depend on the other potential sources of pollutants in the vicinity, the number of cremations and composition of the remains, the design of the system, the operation of the cremator, and emissions control measures.”

Tiverton resident Linda Plazonja, a recent transplant from Newton, Massachusetts, recalled resident complaints about the local crematorium situated in a residential area when she worked for the mayor’s office there.

“On a beautiful sunny day we didn’t have a lot of trouble, but on days where it was rainy or windy- and I’ve learned a lot about your wind here, you have a lot of wind here- on days where there was a lot of cloud cover, I would hear from people within a half mile radius of the crematory saying they couldn’t breath because of the stench and they called it a stench,” Plazonja said. “It was unsettling to people to have to smell burning remains.”

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Despite the applicant insisting the cremation equipment will be state-of-the-art with near-imperceivable emissions, Tiverton resident Daniel Shea, an associate professor and program coordinator of mortuary sciences at Cape Cod Community College, had the same concerns as his neighbors.

“As far as ‘Is it environmentally safe?,’ that’s like saying your car can drive 30 miles per gallon under the perfect conditions of the factory where they’re turning the wheels, and then when you hit the road, you’re like ‘I’ve never in my life gotten 30 miles (per gallon) on my car in my life, what’s going on?’,” Shea explained to The Newport Daily News after the meeting. “The reality is, under perfect conditions, that’s true, but nobody’s tested it. It’s almost like gun laws, no one’s allowed to do the study.”

At the meeting, Shea also shared a new concern: parking and traffic. He said Fall River, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island in general have significant Buddhist populations which customarily result in a large procession that will make its way from the funeral home to the crematorium. He said the 10 parking spaces presented by the applicant may be insufficient to accommodate for these processions and the result could cause traffic on Main Road. However, since the number of parking spaces required for the crematorium is also a zoning code issue, the Planning Board has no control over that either.

What's next for the crematorium proposal?

After listening to resident concerns, the Tiverton Planning Board voted to continue the public hearing to its March 7 regular meeting so the board could take time to make its decision. Attorney Jay Lynch, who represents the applicant, said he would object to the public hearing being continued if there would be more discussion on whether a crematorium should be built on that property, as it is within the applicant’s right to build one there according to the zoning code. However, Planning Board Chair Stuart Hardy said they would limit discussion to issues within the board’s control, such as building design, signage and landscape design.

“I see where you’re coming from, but we have limited options to amend this application and I would appreciate all the help I can get from the public to see if there are other modifications that we can make that would be good for the town of Tiverton and that would be acceptable to the applicant because I think the applicant is willing to work with the Town of Tiverton is willing to work with the town in good faith,” Hardy said.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Tiverton crematorium proposal moves toward approval under zoning laws