Lewis County will put a brief pause on allowing family burial grounds in the county as it develops rules around their establishment.
The Lewis County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday morning during a weekly business meeting to retroactively affirm a six-month moratorium on family burial grounds in the unincorporated parts of the county. The final approval came after a required public hearing. No members of the public attended the meeting or offered comments.
Lewis County Senior Long Range Planner Natalie Kamieniecki, who presented information on the moratorium, assured the board that the move is intended to allow the county to establish procedures for family burial grounds and not to prevent their establishment altogether.
“The moratorium provides staff with time to evaluate the impacts of the new legislation and develop local regulations to implement its provisions,” Kamieniecki said.
The board originally established the moratorium at the urging of community development employees on June 16 — the same day that the new state law permitting family burial grounds took effect.
The resolution and public hearing held Tuesday is required by state law to maintain the six-month moratorium. According to Kamieniecki, the law allowing the county to establish a moratorium also requires the county to hold a public hearing within 60 days of enacting the pause.
Kamieniecki added that the community development team and Lewis County Planning Commission expect to present proposed rules for family burial grounds to the board of commissioners by the end of October.
The establishment of family burial grounds in the state is a recent development after the Washington Legislature passed a bill this year to permit the practice statewide. The bill passed on a bipartisan basis with near unanimous approval in both houses and with a bipartisan group of sponsors including Southwest Washington lawmaker and Washington state GOP Chair Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen.
The law for burial grounds allows naturalized citizens and residents of the state to establish a family burial ground on their own property. The policy comes with some restrictions at the state level. For example, the burial ground can cover no more than 10% of the property on which it is established and the owner cannot sell plots in the burial ground or charge fees for burial.
The burial ground must of course have approval from all co-owners of a property, and the presence of a burial ground must be disclosed when selling the property. The state policy also allows for local governments to restrict or even prohibit the practice.
