Hanover running out of cemetery space
Published:Tuesday | May 2, 2017 | 12:50 PMClaudia Gardner
WESTERN BUREAU:
Andria Dehaney-Dinham, councillor for the Sandy Bay division
in the Hanover Municipal Corporation, says that the corporation is now seeking to establish a replacement cemetery in her division as the existing one has reached its capacity and has been ordered closed.
According to Dehaney-Dinham, the corporation and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) have undertaken several assessments since the beginning of the year and a suitable site in a district close to the Mosquito Cove area in the Sandy Bay division could be picked as the new location.
"We are currently discussing it. It is at the committee level now," the councillor said. "We had proposed a section at Retirement, but I think that it came back to the committee to say that the area was not suitable, based on the location.
"We went the other day and did a site visit, myself and the chief engineering officer, in terms of trying to locate somewhere else and we realised that there are some other potential sites there," continued Dehaney-Dinham. "We are in the process of checking to see if they are government lands."
The Sandy Bay Cemetery has been closed and other burial sites are running out of space. Dehaney-Dinham said that the corporation was aware that residents in Sandy Bay were concerned about having to travel to Hopewell to use the cemetery in that community, which is also filling up.
"We are trying to see how best we can find somewhere else. We know people are having challenges going to Hopewell, and Lucea does not have enough space to cater to the entire parish," the councillor said.
The Hanover Municipal Corporation has control of 10 cemeteries in the parish, the largest being the 12-acre Lucea Cemetery. Municipal cemeteries are also located in communities such as Cacoon, Chester Castle, Haughton Grove, Cousins Cove, and Cauldwell.
Backyard and churchyard burials are still allowed in some districts, but only after assessments are conducted by the municipal corporation's technical officers and the Hanover Health Department.