LEBANON — Efforts to craft regulations allowing for “green burials” in Lebanon’s city-run cemeteries are on hold after officials decided this week to table the matter for the next five years.

The Lebanon Board of Cemetery Trustees voted, 3-2, Tuesday night to implement a five-year “moratorium” precluding it from adopting natural burial rules, according to Deputy City Manager Paula Maville.

The topic can still be discussed during meetings, she said, but trustees don’t intend to complete regulations governing the burial practices within that five-year time frame.

The group’s decision effectively ends two years of work to set aside portions of a cemetery for green burials and write new guidelines allowing them in Lebanon’s city code. Green burials, which are already allowed in the Upper Valley communities of Grafton and Corinth, are meant to allow a body to decompose naturally without chemical preservatives or embalming fluids.

To that end, the practice usually involves the use of biodegradable coffins, caskets or shrouds and forgoes the use of a cement vault. Graves also are dug to a shallower depth — 2 to 3 feet — to encourage microbial activity to aid decomposition.

Even though green burials are accepted in some municipalities, trustees felt there were too many unanswered questions to move forward, Maville said Wednesday morning.

“I think that they’re concerned with the newness of it,” she said. “Based on the conversation that happened, they don’t feel the need to lead the charge on this, so to say.”

Fran Hanchett, who chairs the trustees, said the group’s desire to approach the topic carefully led to the moratorium. Green burial plots tend to “sink,” leading to concerns about care and liability, she said.

“A lot of us have questions that we don’t get answers to, and I want answers before we incorporate something,” she said.

The trustees this year began holding special meetings to discuss natural burials. Those included talks with experts such as Patrick Healy, director of the Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier, which started to allow green burials last year.

The group also had a working draft that included grave dimensions, permitting and pricing.

Advocates of green burials say they are better for the environment, less costly and more in keeping with how burials used to occur, among other benefits.

“It’s unfair to say that we didn’t provide them with enough information or answers to their questions,” said Trustee Caitlyn Hauke, who supported the addition of green burials in Lebanon. “And I think it’s unnecessary to have a five-year moratorium on considering this.”

Hauke, who sits on the board of the national Green Burial Council, said there are plenty of cemeteries performing green burials that Lebanon could learn from if her colleagues were interested.

“I’m feeling defeated and frustrated,” she said while pointing out that residents asked the city to explore green burials in 2019.

At the time, city councilors encouraged the cemetery trustees to investigate whether it would be possible to implement the practices and report back. Some, like Councilor Erling Heistad, said their ancestors were likely buried using similar methods.

“It would be nice that there would be an option for people to have a green burial if that’s what they preferred,” he said on Wednesday.

Heistad also questioned what could change in five years that would affect the trustees’ thinking on green burials, and encouraged them to leave the door open to more talks.

“All government needs to be open to hearing different points of view,” he said. “We need to be able to hear each other.”

The Board of Cemetery Trustees’ next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 8, at 5 p.m. Access to the meeting can be found at LebanonNH.gov/Live.

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.