Petersburg installs first columbariums at cemetery

With Petersburg’s swampy muskeg and vertical dense forest, finding a place to bury your loved ones can be a bit tricky. There’s just not that much room for cemeteries.

This week, the local cemetery is getting its first columbariums to hold urns. There are four of them made of precast cement and black granite weighing 12,000 pounds each.

At the cemetery Monday, the four columbariums were slowly, very slowly, being hoisted off a flat-bed semi onto their new home, a large cement slab lined with grass.

Watching the whole process was Paul Anderson. He is the commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and helped spear head the project several years ago.

Pricing for the columbarium niches are still unknown. The ordinance regarding those details will go before the borough assembly in the next few months. Right now the borough attorney is considering the ordinance.