Jerry Carino
Asbury Park Press
Published 5:10am Jan 30, 2025 | Updated 7:29am Jan 30, 2025
Link to story on Asbury Park Press website
MIDDLETOWN — Casey Bond is the mother of two small children, including daughter Henrietta, who was born premature at just 24 weeks last year. Henrietta weighed one pound at birth and like most micro-preemies, her lungs were not fully developed.
“She has chronic lung disease,” Casey said. “We have to be very careful about what she gets exposed to. She got a common cold and ended up in pediatric ICU with pneumonia.”
Most days, Casey takes Henrietta to Applebrook Playground, which is right next to their home. Earlier this week, news that nearby Fair View Cemetery might build a crematorium on an adjacent plot hit her like an anvil.
“To say I’m beside myself with fear would be an understatement,” Casey said. “I’m so terrified about this. Anybody would want to protect their child, but when you have a baby that’s already this vulnerable, you’d do anything to protect them.”
She plans on bringing Henrietta to the Middletown planning board’s public hearing on the matter Feb. 5. That’s Henrietta’s first birthday.
“What scares me is the fine particulate matter that can get into peoples’ lungs, but especially vulnerable populations like infants,” Casey said. “When she’s already set up with a compromised immune and lung system, to have them exposed to particles in the air is terrifying. And I’m also afraid of the unknown, of what risks this could pose. We’re in our backyard and that park every single day.”
She’s not alone. Several neighbors voiced concerns about the crematorium to the Asbury Park Press.
“This has been an issue in Middletown for quite some time, going back as early as 2008, and now here they are again,” said Andy Clark, who lives in a neighborhood across the street from the proposed crematorium site, which is currently a vacant lot at the intersection of Normandy Road and Oak Hill Road.
“They want to build this crematorium on this plot of land near soccer fields in a residential community,” Clark said. “Basically it’s a money grab. The people of Middletown simply don’t want this.”
Concerns about mercury
The Fair View Cemetery Association, which owns the cemetery and the vacant parcel in question, has been seeking to build a crematorium for years as available space for graves in the cemetery dwindles, but ran into permitting roadblocks in the past. Last week, neighbors received notice about the renewed effort.
“The application is without variance and is a conditionally permitted use,” John Giunco, an attorney who represents Fair View Cemetery Association, wrote in an email to the Press. “The application meets the conditions. There will be testimony about the site and the applicable township zoning ordinances and the operation at the hearing. It is a simple enough plan and it has an appropriate landscaping design for the site.”
Critics of crematoriums cite concerns about mercury emissions that can result from the process of burning dental fillings. A study of the issue in Canada published in 2020 and posted on the National Institutes of Health’s website concluded that “the main concern about mercury from crematoriums is not acute exposure to immediately dangerous ground-level concentrations, but long-term indirect exposure from the contamination of the environment and the food chain.”
‘Why do we need this here?’
A Facebook group, “Stop Fairview Crematorium,” has sprung back to life after a few years of dormancy.
“Very disappointed that this has resurfaced,” said Kate Farley, who has lived in the neighborhood across the street from the proposed site for the past six years. “I have a lot of concerns with the emissions going into the environment so close to a residential area. People here were not expecting they would be living next to a crematorium when they bought their homes.”
Emily Levesque grew up in Middletown and recently moved back to raise a child here.
“I go to the bus stop in the morning and afternoon for my child and everyone’s talking about, ‘Why do we need this here?’” she said. “It backs up against neighborhoods and soccer fields. I would expect this kind of thing to be in an industrial area — that would make more sense to me than this being in the center of a neighborhood.”
She doesn’t live right next to the proposed crematorium site, but takes a wider view of its potential consequences.
“I’m also concerned of the negative impacts it would have on the town,” she said. “At the end of the day, will it turn away families, will it turn away people from coming to live here?”
Sarah Giordano, a mother of two young children who has lived in Middletown since 2019, has another question.
“Who if anyone would be testing and monitoring air quality with the crematorium’s close proximity to neighborhoods, shopping centers and sports fields?” she said.
Clark said he expects neighbors to be out in force echoing such concerns at the Feb. 5 planning board meeting.
“The cemetery has been pushing this for way too long,” he said. “This zombie project needs to die.”
Jerry Carino is community columnist for the Asbury Park Press, focusing on the Jersey Shore’s interesting people, inspiring stories and pressing issues. Contact him at [email protected].
