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Lords Ridge Cemetery full

GeneralLords Ridge Cemetery full
At Tuesday’s public meeting with City residents, Councilor Wayne Usher announced that the venerable Lords Ridge Cemetery is down to its final 45 days – a month and a half – in terms of space for new graves, based on weekly requests for grave space.
   
A source Amandala spoke with, who has knowledge of the cemetery, told us that on average, 50 persons die per month in Belize City, including by murders, suicides and deaths by other means, averaging out to 12 or 13 per week.
  
Of these, we are told, approximately 35 will require new graves dug; the remainder may choose to be buried alongside their loved ones.
  
Assuming the rate stays the same, no space will be available in Lords Ridge by the end of April, we are told.
   
In an interview with Amandala on Wednesday evening, Councilor Usher maintained that while Lords Ridge will not be closed in the foreseeable future, the format of burials there, if the Council has its way, will almost certainly change, and the practice of Belizeans in mourning their dead may have to be adapted for the modern times, he warned.
  
Lords Ridge occupies acres of land on both sides of the Western Highway between Miles 1 and 2, and much of the land surrounding it was previously being held for future expansion, but was instead given over to housing developments in the Collet and Lake Independence constituencies, which border the cemetery.
  
Now, on the Collet side, settlement has reached the very edge (and in some cases, inside) the cemetery, and the only available piece of land for expansion on the Lake I edge, beyond the current ridge in which burials are being conducted, is swampy and not “cost-effective” to fill, according to Councilor Usher.
  
The currently unfilled section costs about $600 – $700 per plot to fill, and while the area has enough land for 100 burial plots that would extend the life of the cemetery to May, the Council has decided against it. The current ridge was filled at a cost of $125,000, with assistance from the Ministry of Works.
  
Facing a dead-end, the Council has embarked on several short-term and long-term solutions, all of which Councilor Usher outlined to Amandala on Wednesday.
  
The Council is currently in “advanced negotiations” with private cemetery Homeland Memorial Park at Mile 8 on the Western Highway to provide plots to residents at concessionary rates. That has not been finalized, and so Usher was not able to say what prices would be or how many plots would be available, but he assured us that with 55 acres at its disposal, Homeland could handle the work, and that the plan would be temporary.
  
Homeland charges $600 per burial for private burial spaces; the Council’s standard fees are $75 for children’s graves and $150 for adults.
  
Lord’s Ridge itself has space for burying individuals next to each other in the same grave – and according to Usher, many Belizeans don’t mind sharing space with long-deceased relatives. Usher himself has plans to do so when he dies, he told us.
   
But to facilitate new graves, the Council is looking hard for suitable land – at least 10 – 15 acres on high ground, well-drained, accessible and spacious. So far, a team of officials from the Council and the ministries of Natural Resources and Health are scouring the Western Highway (the area along the Northern Highway within city limits is too developed and crowded to contain a public cemetery), and have found nothing between the current cemetery and the Burdon Canal Bridge, and between Belize City and Hattieville, have found only two tracts of land, a total of 39 acres, at Mile 13, Western Highway, which fit the criteria.
  
Those lands are privately owned, and there are other ramifications, particularly in the legal area, which have to be looked at before that land becomes a public cemetery.
  
The third option is a series of changes to the by-laws of the City Council Act on public cemeteries to allow for burials above ground (such as that of Sir Barry Bowen a few weeks ago in San Ignacio), the use of standing burial vaults such as those at the old Yarborough Cemetery and the park on Queen Charlotte Street, and even the use of cremation.
  
In the end, Councilor Usher assures us that there is “no need to panic. We are making sure the City’s residents will have plots to bury their dead, not necessarily at Lords Ridge Cemetery, but nonetheless available.”
   
He also advised us that the Council has not, and will not entertain requests to reserve burial plots in the ground remaining.

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