ATLANTA – Legislation that would regulate an alternative method for disposing of the dead is moving through the Georgia General Assembly, leaving astonished lawmakers in its wake.
“You’re blowing my mind here today because I didn’t know this was allowed,” said Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, chairman of a committee that heard Senate Bill 241 last month.
The measure seeks regulations for “organic human reduction facilities.”
It was brought to the legislature by Sen. Rick Williams, R-Milledgeville, who is in the funeral home business.
“It’s just human composting,” he said.
After testimony about how composting works, including technical details such as the proper temperature and duration to turn a body into soil, the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee unanimously approved SB 241.
“This committee never ceases to amaze me,” said Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, just before the vote. “Me either,” Cowsert said.
The bill then passed the full Senate 51-1 last week.
On Monday, it took a brief spin through a subcommittee in the House of Representatives, which sent it to the House Regulated Industries Committee in another unanimous vote.
The presentation Monday was brief after Rep. Jason Ridley, R-Chatsworth, who was leading the Regulatory Subcommittee, introduced Williams by quipping that he would be presenting his “Breaking Bad bill.” Ridley was referring to a television series from more than a decade ago in which a lot of characters die unnaturally.
Despite the wisecracks around SB 241, the bill is deadly serious. Operators would need to be licensed and inspected, and they would have to use the proper equipment, Williams said. Georgia has no rules around composting the dead, he said, adding that he wants to avoid a repeat of what happened in Noble, Ga.
That’s where authorities discovered a grisly scene in 2002: 339 bodies — or their parts — scattered around the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory in various stages of decomposition. A more recent example comes from Colorado, where nearly 200 bodies were found decaying at the Return to Nature Funeral Home last year, in a maggot-infested building with bodily fluids several inches deep.
The ghoulish nature of SB 241 troubled Sen. Frank Ginn at that February Senate committee hearing.
“It’s really scary,” the Republican from Danielsville said, adding, “I remember you brought the bill a year or two ago about dissolving people.”
Ginn wanted to know what happens to the composted remains, and Williams said the family can take possession of them, just like with the ashes that result from cremation.
As with cremains, relatives can have their loved one’s material mixed with paints used to create a portrait, Williams said, or they can have a company add the ashes or soil to shotgun shells, then scatter the remains across a dove field on opening day of dove season.
“You can send them to a pyrotechnics place and have them stuffed into fireworks, or you can scatter them, you can keep them, whatever you want to do with them,” Williams said.
The byproduct of properly composted bodies is perfectly sanitary and safe, he said. Testimony from one person who’d visited a proper composting facility said it smelled like a feed store.
The graphic detail prompted gallows humor.
“You all know how you get a song stuck in your head some days and it just won’t go out?” Cowsert asked. “I got dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones in my head.” (It was a reference to an early 20th century song by The Delta Rhythm Boys.)
“Well,” Williams shot back, “how about Randy Travis’ Diggin up Bones?”