Busack still fighting Sanbornton cemetery location

Despite a decision by the Board of Selectmen to proceed with plans to complete the town’s first cemetery, Helmut Busack is continuing to fight the project.

Busack, who is chairman of the town Planning Board, said he met recently with the Conservation Commission and got its members to agree to do more testing on the Tower Hill Road land where the new cemetery will be.

“We came to an agreement that they would do some wetlands studies and get a soil scientists up there — for free — and dig some test pits,” Busack said.

“My feeling is that from all the research I’ve done that it’s a very wet area up there,” he said. “Three-quarters of the year it has water running out of the ground. The normal water table (there) is just two-to-three feet, which I don’t think that is too conducive for a cemetery.”

Ever since town leaders picked the site at the edge of the town forest for its official cemetery, Busack has been raising questions about its appropriateness. The planning board chairman has cited reports on the internet about “cemetery pollution” from formaldehyde and other embalming fluids. He has also maintained that the three acres are over a “bedrock aquifer.”

“With bedrock aquifers, the water goes through the fissures of the rocks,” he said. “So if there’s any pollution up there it goes into everyone’s wells.”

The issue came to a head at a Town Hall meeting several months ago. After listing to Busack and some experts in the field, the Selectboard decided that there was no indication that the site would impact the water table or home values in the area.

But Busack is still concerned. He’s said he’s recently seen correspondence from Chairman Peter Hibberd of the Burial Ground Committee stating that the new cemetery will be able to accommodate people of all religious persuasions.

Busack says that some religions require dead bodies to be in contact with the soil.

“You should be buried about six feet down, that’s the standard. But if water there is normally just two-feet underfoot, you’re going to have problems as the tissue degrades — not to mention the other kinds of cemetery pollution,” he said.

Busack said he first met with the Conservation Commission several weeks ago. A second meeting was scheduled for last Thursday but not enough members showed up for a quorum, he said.

Busack calls himself a “secondary abutter” to the new cemetery because he owns two pieces of property near the site.

“And I’m kind of a naturalist,” he added. “I don’t like to see things get mucked up."