Upper Saddle River residents protest Jewish development on NY … – NorthJersey.com

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Residents question impact on aquifer, local traffic

Upper Saddle River retain council to explore development in neighboring Rockland County at its May 4, 2023 meeting.

Marsha A. Stoltz, NorthJersey.com

UPPER SADDLE RIVER A two-year simmering dispute over building violations at several Jewish facilities under construction on its northern border has finally generated a public pledge to pursue remedies from the mayor and council at Thursday's meeting.

The dispute primarily concerns the clearing of a 19-acre wooded site for an orthodox Jewish cemetery recently opened at 44 Hillside Ave. in Airmont, New York, and the construction of a 18,520-square-foot mikvah or ritual Jewish bath facility on 3.7 acres across the street from the cemetery at 79 Hillside Ave. in Ramapo, New York.

Both have been cited by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation for failure to engage in runoff containment practices during constructon.

Now, however, the concerns have widened to include an allegation of insufficient on-site parking for the cemetery, forcing cars onto the shoulders of narrow Hillside Avenue, and funneling traffic onto Upper Saddle River side streets. Officials are also charging that the builder has reneged on a pledge to arrange for a water connection with Veolia (formerly Suez) and is now planning to install three wells to service the building, with discharge site in question.

The borough is largely on well and septic systems, and residents allege filling one swimming pool empties the aquifer serving the Hampshire Hill area, leading to questions of the impact of the mikveh.

Upper Saddle River Mayor Arman Fardanesh told 24 residents attending the meeting that White Plains attorney Michael Burke has again been retained to address "water and sewer issues" for the borough, and that they are meeting with water-impact committee and elected officials next week.

"Following that, we will have a meeting with both New Jersey and New York legislation to include members of this council as well as Mike Waller from New York State to discuss the ongoing issues that impact residents," Fardanesh said. "We'll also be engaging with the N.J. DEP and N.Y. DEC. We are working round the clock and taking this issue very seriously."

The $14.5 million, 52-room Ohel Sarah or Hillside Mikveh is scheduled for completion in September 2024. The mivehohelsarah.com website states the orthodox community has "outgrown" its existing Mikvah of Rockland County on Viola Road in Monsey, New York and that another is "desperately needed."

The Har Shalom Cemetery is being billed as the largest Shomer Shabbos-owned cemetery in the United States, described as containing anywhere from 10,200 to 20,000 plots. Traditionally bodies are buried unembalmed in a shroud in a pine box with a hole to facilitate "going back to earth."

While residents deny their concerns are antisemitic, they refer to two cemeteries east of the Har Shalom site as "clean" even though one of them is the Jewish Gates of Zion Cemetery following the same burial rules because Har Shalom bodies are "buried without a proper enclosure."

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Burial of unembalmed bodies is not prohibited in New York or New Jersey, and in fact is gaining in popularity as part of the "green burial" movement on the premise that embalmed bodies may be leaching more chemicals into the ground water than naturally-decaying bodies.

The Green Burial Council notes that "embalming does not remove toxins from anywhere in the body" and cremation has no environmental benefits.

"It's an old thing that's new again," said Jeff Vander Platt of Vander Platt Funeral Home in Paramus. "We don't have a whole lot of call for it, but we are able to perform them."

Among the cemeteries performing green burials is Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah, one of 11 Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Newark with New Jerseys first Catholic Natural/Green Burial Section. Patrons can choose from "dark," "medium" or "light" green options from burial in a shroud to burial with environmentally-friendly embalming chemicals and decomposing casket.

Residents argue the Har Shalom cemetery land has been made additionally "porous" and susceptible to seepage by the wholescale removal of the site's foliage, fluffing up what they estimate to be 15 feet of top soil so remains can seep down to the aquifer more quickly.

But Mickey Levine, executive vice president of the Cemetery Association of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, says he's never had a complaint about seepage or water contamination in 20 years of overseeing their 18 burial sites in Bergen and Passaic counties.

"When you dig a grave you're loosening the soil, " Levine said. "We're doing burials all the time."

Old Paramus Reformed Church in Ridgewood oversees the adjacent 22-acre, 18,600-plot Valleau Cemetery just off Route 17 south. The Rev. Rob Miller says his church doesn't do "green burials," but that their vault is primarily required to stabilize the ground as soil settles after burial, not to prevent seepage.

In his 2022 book "Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries," author Greg Melville points out that the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world embalming its dead a practice left over from the Civil War to preserve bodies for long-distance transport. Before that, dead people went into the ground "au natural."

Melville says that while research on how cemeteries contaminate ground water are "surprisingly scarce," there are indications that the contamination is more likely coming from bodies that are embalmed with a cancer-causing combination of formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol an average three gallons per body or 4.5 million gallons for the U.S. in 2021 alone.

"There are many potential fixes for the creep of graveyard ooze into our aquifers," Melville said. "The easiest being to stop injecting the dead with chemicals."

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