For support or questions please contact:
Dr. Karl Hens - KARLHENS@aol.com - technical expert (952) 484-7578
William (Bill) Beggs - VWBEGGS@gmail.com - for any other questions (814) 964-8436
How does a crematorium permit process in
Pennsylvania work and what went wrong?
The city council of Corry first needed to approve the zoning and location of the crematorium to be built and it could only be signed after the city council and zoning officer approved the application. In September 2023, when residents first objected to the crematorium, none of the current city council members, other than the Mayor Mike Baker, were aware of the construction of the crematorium.
The Bracken funeral home was grandfathered in as funeral home in a semi-residential area as non-conforming use, as this funeral home had existed for many years and was built before zoning ordinances were established.
The Corry crematorium was wrongly approved when City of Corry Zoning Ordinance No. 1347 was in effect.
Section 301.1 of Corry City ordinance no. 1347 states: “No change in a non-conforming use which increases vehicle traffic or is otherwise objectionable to the neighborhood shall be permitted by the board.” The permit given to the funeral home for the crematorium by a City of Corry employee without city council and neighborhood approval was illegal.
The crematorium is indeed very objectionable to the neighborhood. The city council never approved the permit, the neighborhood was never asked, the application for the change in non-conforming use was never advertised in Corry, neighbors were never asked for their approval, and the permit was single handedly signed by a city of Corry employee without city council approval.
The crematorium needed serious structural foundation changes within the existing garages behind the funeral home that needed a new construction permit which could legally not be approved in the non-conforming location of the garages behind the funeral home.
The city of Corry claims the crematorium was approved as an accessory to the funeral home.
However, the funeral home has already advertised cremation services to many other funeral homes in the surrounding area, so it is no longer an accessory to the existing funeral home but an illegal business expansion at the expense of damaging the health of the people in the neighborhood of the crematorium and all of the residents of Corry.
The emissions of the new crematorium are without question unacceptable and can cause severe health issues, both through acute poisoning as well as from prolonged/ cumulative health damage from toxins released, which can take several years to show.
Only once the city has signed the permit for the crematorium to be built, the DEP reviews and signs the permit independent of the location and the funeral home's emissions are not well regulated by the PA-DEP (Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection) despite Corry having been officially designated as an “Environmental Justice Area” by the PA-DEP as Corry has higher than average pollution levels, already unacceptable mercury pollution levels, higher than average cancer occurrences and Corry residents have a lower life expectancy as a result.
HOW CREMATORIA FUNCTION WITH MINIMUM ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS:
Far away from residential areas & fenced in
With tall chimneys instead of low exhaust stacks for proper dispersion of pollutants
Using sufficient pollution control equipment such as:
mercury abatement equipment
catalytic conversion and filtration
entrained air flow processes with sorbent injection
fixed bed sorbent process with activated carbon and hydrated lime or similar
fine particulate traps