Join the Cemetery Protection Group And Help Find Long-Term Solutions

On August 9, nine concerned citizens and faith community leaders met in Charleston to strategize methods to enhance cemetery preservation throughout West Virginia. The group included people who have had long-term ongoing problems with cemetery access and desecration, as well as people who are just beginning to experience these problems.

We updated one another on current legislative and

community contacts relevant to cemetery preservation. Next, Sierra Clubs Bill Price led us through a strategy-planning process, during which we assessed our resources, values, and allies.

We then set goals, including:

V Law enforcement officers (county and state) will become educated about and fulfill their duties related to cemetery protection.

V Legislature will pass cemetery protection bills and remove an interpretive exemption clause in the current legal code.

V Legislature will appropriate funds and mandate on-the-ground cemetery surveys.

V General public will become much more active in the campaign.

V Coal companies will follow the cemetery protection legal code.

As you can see, we have some ambitious goals, but we all agree that cemetery preservation is an issue in which we can, and must, prevail!

Our goal is to gather a much larger group of spokespeople and concerned citizens around the issue of cemetery preservation. We hope to soon do targeted mailings to increase the number of people in our networks.

Weve yet to decide on a definite name for our group; we have considered calling ourselves the Cemetery Preservation Group (CPG). We are also exploring the idea of developing a blog on the OVEC website that would be specifically for sharing cemetery stories. So, stay tuned for more news related to cemetery preservation.

If you would like to be included in this group or are interested in helping with this issue in any way, please contact Robin Blakeman at (304) 840-4877 or robin@ohvec.org.

We certainly need anyone who values cultural and cemetery protection in our state.