The harsh winter that left many of us with higher heating bills and higher blood pressure also managed to slide its icy fingers into Maple Leaf Cemetery.
The long, cold winter has caused numerous leaks in the cemetery’s water system, heaved up pavement in many places, and even toppled tombstones.
Chatham Coun. Derek Robertson called the winter “one of the most difficult winters in any of the years that I can recall.
“The winter was absolutely brutal. It was brutal on our roads and brutal on our bridges. It was no different in our cemetery,” he said.
LEADWAVE Technologies from Chatham Voice on Vimeo.
The water lines throughout the cemetery suffered the worst of it. At first, the system leaked so badly that only the tap behind the chapel was turned on, according to Charlie Dorner, the equipment operator at Maple Leaf Cemetery.
“We had leaks in all three sections,” he said. “The old, old section had leaked already. It (the water) has been off for a number of years there.”
Dorner said he was inundated with complaints this spring from cemetery visitors. He sent them up the pipeline to city hall.
The result is there are perhaps six functioning taps across the cemetery right now. Four of them are along the newest section on the north side of the cemetery, while the one behind the chapel remains on, as does a lone tap to the southwest, near the tracks after you pass through the stone gate to the older portion of the grounds.
“There are probably another 20 taps that aren’t on,” Dorner said. “We’ve had little old ladies go down to the creek to get water.”
Signs are up across the cemetery telling visitors where they can access the water.
Dorner thinks it might be prohibitively expensive to replace the entire water system, but believes the leaks could at least be fixed.
Robertson said the municipality is in the process of getting quotes on what would be required to fix the water system at Maple Leaf Cemetery and staff will evaluate those quotes in the near future.
“They want to get the work done as soon as possible, but obviously they’ll want to do it in the most cost-effective manner,” he said.
Meanwhile the quest for tap water to keep flowers fresh on the graves of loved ones remains a difficult task in Chatham’s cemetery.
