Lord Ridge Cemetery running out of space
Talk to everyone who has had to bury a loved one, and they will tell you that the Lord Ridge Cemetery is running out of space. The Belize City Council acknowledged as much today in a release. This is in addition to the other problem of drainage caused to nearby residents by the filling of the swampy land. But City Councillor responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the burial grounds, Wayne Usher, says the Council is trying to determine a solution to the problem. The Council is now looking to Central Government for help among other things.
Wayne Usher, Councillor Responsible for Cemetery
“We will be putting no less than two hundred loads of fill on that site right now. So the projection is for us to have a lot of filling done and compacting. The bulldozer is already out there, I’ve seen it this morning working. When that is concluded we will have at least another six months of space. The cemetery still has quite a bit of space but it needs filling—its really swamp land. Once we filled that I project that we can comfortably be here for at least another year because there are other areas in the cemetery that needs just to be cut and filled. Whilst we are doing the filling, the council’s backhoe will be doing the drainage. We’ll be digging a drain and we will reconstruct the drain so that it flows into an existing drain that was dug before that leads right pass the cemetery into a little pond, an area of catchment.”
Duane Moody
“After a year there will be more space needed. What is it that the City Council is doing?”
Wayne Usher
“As our release said, me personally, I like to give people options. We are right at this moment awaiting passage of a statutory instrument that will allow us to have burials above ground. Our existing laws do not permit for us to bury people above ground-vaulting and that’s what we are talking about where we can put two bodies in one spot. We can have then buried above ground in vaults. It’s being done in other municipalities.”
The council will also look to Central Government for another plot of land to serve as a cemetery for the city and is considering working with the private cemetery, Homeland Memorial, at eight miles.
