41 acres of Salt Lake cemetery turf ruined after employee error


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SALT LAKE CITY — Nearly half of the Salt Lake City Cemetery was damaged when a city employee accidentally sprayed much of the landscape with the wrong kind of herbicide, a city official said Friday.

The 167-year-old cemetery at 4th Avenue and N Street will immediately undergo extensive repairs that will cost the city between $250,000 and $600,000.

City officials hope an ambitious renovation will have put the cemetery well on its way to recovery by Memorial Day, said Rick Graham, director of public services for Salt Lake City.

“We would like to see as much progress and improvement and restoration that we can do before that day so that residents, visitors (and) family members have access to all burial sites,” Graham said. “It will be impossible to make all the corrections by Memorial Day, but if work begins immediately and if weather is our friend and stays on our side, we can make a great deal of progress toward restoration.”

Graham said an employee applied a “nonselective” herbicide called Ranger Pro in September that killed the turf and leafy area in about 41 acres throughout the 100-acre landscape. He said the turf in 26 of those acres was totally destroyed.

The damage is spread throughout the cemetery but is especially concentrated near its northwest corner, Graham said. Nearby landscapes holding Catholic and Jewish cemeteries were not affected.


The final cost though for this will be determined once final bids are received and we know exactly what it's going to cost us to make the fix.

–Rick Graham, director of public services for Salt Lake City


Employees first started noticing unusual coloration of cemetery turf in late February, Graham said. Existing turf will be thinned out and new seeds will be planted in the bare soil left behind.

“The plan that we have chosen to follow calls for most of the impacted area turf to be reclaimed and restored through seeding,” Graham said. “It also includes laying of new turf or sod in areas that experienced a heavy loss.”

The logistics of the renovation are still being worked out, and it’s impossible to expect no restricted access to graves whatsoever, Graham said. But the city will make new burials a top priority, he said.

The cemetery has seen 123,000 burials since 1847 and currently averages about 450 per year.

“There's going to be equipment and things that are going to be working during the day,” Graham said. “(But) obviously we are not going to be closing things down. There will be burials, and we when have a burial … work will cease.

"It’s a little to early to envision all of the scenarios, but we will do our best to make every area open with little impact," he said.

The city is still sorting through a bidding process for repairs to the cemetery.

“The final cost though for this will be determined once final bids are received and we know exactly what it's going to cost us to make the fix,” Graham said.

Graham said nobody lost their job as a result of the mistake, though he wouldn’t comment specifically on how the employee who used the wrong herbicide may have been disciplined.

“We've met with cemetery employees to review procedures, job protocols and determine the cause of the problem,” he said. “Our most obvious concern is what caused the problem and … (making) sure this problem doesn't happen again.

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