Hundreds of Frisco residents pushing back against the building of a new crematorium
FRISCO (CBSNewsTexas.com) — Hundreds of Frisco residents are pushing back against a crematorium being built near a neighborhood, schools and popular parks.
Homeowners living near Ridgeview West Memorial Park say they only learned about it just a few days ago.
"It's going to affect all of us," Andy Bird said.
They created a petition to stop this, which now has more than 800 signatures. Their top concerns are the impact it will have on their health, the safety risks associated with crematoriums—particularly mercury—and how this will affect property values.
"I have a 2-and-a-half-year-old and a 1-year-old and we go to the park all the time," Libby Lienhoop said. "We go to Warren Park, there's neighborhood parks that we go to, and doing the research on crematoriums super briefly...it's pretty bad."
"The science here is not proven out and our concern is who knows in five years, 10 years, what sort of health implications it will have on kids," Mubeen Ahmed said.
At Tuesday's city council meeting, residents expressed their concerns.
City officials said plans for the crematorium were approved before the neighborhood and there's not much they can do.
"The local government code, which are statutes created and adopted by the state, create rights in zoning and other regulations that allows the landowner to go forward without the city being able to interfere," city attorney Richard Abernathy said.
In this case, Abernathy said he's not aware of any exceptions. A spokesperson for the city noted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality will oversee and monitor air quality.
"The idea is that we got to bring awareness," Bird said. "People didn't have a choice and the bottom line comes down to this, give people a choice, give visibility."
CBS News Texas received a statement from Turrentine-Jackson-Morrow, which owns the property. It says in part:
"Our locations and buildings are permitted through public process and meet all federal, state, and local requirements. Respectfully, we value our neighbors and the communities we serve."