Neighbors who live on Werkley Road in Tonawanda — right behind the Amigone Funeral Home — say they have seen black soot on the snow in their properties.
They say they don’t believe it’s dirt, but human ash coming from the funeral home’s smoke stack and crematory.
Residents began voicing their concerns about their health over the summer when the crematory reopened after seven years.
One resident, Ron Labuda, says the community smells like human flesh when winds are high — and prior testing by the state has proven that human ash is falling on the property of this community.
“We do what we can outside, but when it’s burning it's always in the back of your head, 'What are we inhaling? Whose relative are we inhaling, or human ash? It’s always in our minds, 'What is coming out of that stack?' We have no monitoring of it, we have no idea,” said Labuda.
Residents on the block have filed a class action lawsuit to get the Amigone Funeral Home to stop using its crematory.
An attorney for Amigone, Dennis Vacco, released the following statement:
"The facility has just recently been reopened after the installation of nearly a million dollars’ worth of equipment to upgrade the facility to a standard that not another single crematory in Western New York has been subjected to a standard that our facility has met. The facility is now operated under a dually issued permit from the Department of Environment Conservation. It’s the same DEC that was working with the neighbors (on Werkley Road) way back when that forced the facility to shut down to conduct a review of its then existing equipment."
The next court date is in March 1.