Vote delayed on Muslim cemetery
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 9, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Johnnie Barnes addresses the mayor and City Council during Tuesday night's meeting. Barnes is one of the community members who are concerned about what the impacts of the proposed Muslim cemetery would be. Additional information brought to the attention of the council influenced the vote to be moved to another date.
The Goldsboro City Council agreed Tuesday night to defer voting on a proposed private cemetery for the Islamic Center of Goldsboro on Fedelon Trail.
Council member Gene Aycock made the motion to defer voting on the matter, and council member Charles Williams seconded the motion. It passed unanimously.
Aycock said he made the motion after hearing more concerns expressed by residents of the Fedelon Trail area during Tuesday night's public comment period.
William Pearman and Johnnie Barnes -- both of whom spoke during the public hearing regarding the proposed cemetery on July 27 -- spoke during Tuesday night's council meeting, this time expressing concerns about how their groundwater might be affected by a cemetery.
The first time Barnes and Pearman spoke, Barnes cited concerns over protecting "the integrity of the community," property values and said those who use well water might be affected adversely by a cemetery. Pearman said the cemetery would block access to his tobacco farm.
"I'm concerned about water quality. North Carolina state law says you only have to bury them (dead bodies) 18 inches below the surface of the ground," Pearman told the council Tuesday night, while holding an 18-inch piece of tubing to illustrate how deep 18 inches is. "Now, that's from my hand to (the top of the tube). That's all the depth that a body has to be buried. And the surface water -- the property that they're proposing to put the cemetery in is right next to a woodland that has historically been wet."
Pearman, who lives at 601 Fedelon Trail, claimed that the proposed area for the cemetery is in a wetland, and went on to say that any water runoff from the area the cemetery would be built in would contaminate the city's water supply by way of the Little River.
According to Wayne County Health Department guidelines, grave sites must be at least 50 feet from a well or water supply, and must be a minimum of 18 inches below the ground's surface.
But Pearman said he looked up burial guidelines from the World Health Organization on the Internet, claiming the guidelines recommend grave sites be at least 300 feet from a well or water supply.
The city's planning commission, in its recommendation to the council to approve the plans for the private cemetery, cited guidelines set forth by the WHO for cases of disaster. These guidelines state that a grave site should be at least 30 meters, or 98.4 feet, away from groundwater sources used for drinking water, and also say that grave floors should be at least 1.5 meters, or 4.92 feet, above the water table.
It has not been specified how close to a drinking water supply the proposed cemetery for the Islamic Center of Goldsboro would be located.
Barnes, who lives at 310 Fedelon Trail, said he was concerned that the proposed private cemetery would become a regional cemetery.
His reasoning was based on the fact that Muslims who live in Goldsboro currently use cemeteries in Raleigh and Greenville to bury their dead.
"I learned that this cemetery is going to be approximately six acres and that they're going to have at least 1,000 people," Barnes said. "So given that people are carried from here to Raleigh, then it is understandable that people will be brought from other areas to here. So it's going to become a regional cemetery -- not a private cemetery, but a regional cemetery, which adds a lot more complexity to it. We have a well close to our land that surrounds that, we have a well there. We drink that water. You get hundreds of people buried out there, you would not drink the water. We are very concerned, and we well should be."
Barnes did not elaborate on why it would be troublesome if the cemetery did become used as a regional cemetery. The proposed site plans for the cemetery that were submitted to the city show it being three acres in size, not six, with a capacity of up to 1,033 graves.
Since the cemetery would be classified as a private cemetery, the zoning would not dictate who can or cannot be buried in the cemetery. It would be left up to the religious body's discretion as to who can be buried in its cemetery. Aycock said his decision to make a motion to defer action on the cemetery and further delay a decision on the matter was made because of the concerns expressed by Pearman and Barnes. He said the decision to defer action on the controversial issue did not have anything to do with the primary elections for city council -- for which Aycock is running -- being just around the corner on Oct. 6.
"They were mentioning about what the World Health Organization recommends and all that, and I hadn't heard that," Aycock said. "You know, I just think it's no big deal to pass it tonight or pass it two weeks or two months from now. I just want all the facts. Because when it comes down this row here (of City Council members to vote on), you know who's the last person that votes is, don't you? It's me. If they have one in the row voting 'No,' then the outcome of the vote relies on my vote. I want to make sure I make the right vote. Right now, I'm not opposed to (the cemetery). I just want to make sure I'm taking into consideration everybody's rights and understanding of it. If the men hadn't have come up and spoke tonight, I would've gone ahead with voting."
When the matter does come before council to be voted on, six of seven council members will need to vote in favor of the proposal for it to pass. This is because 60 percent of property owners near and around the proposed site for the cemetery signed a protest petition against the cemetery, invoking the city's four-fifths voting rule. Therefore, a normal majority vote of four to three will not be sufficient for the proposal to pass.
No future date to vote on the proposal was set by the end of the council meeting, with the only specification on a future vote being "postponed to a later date."