Orion Sanders district manager for the Kern River Valley Cemetery District. Photo by Catherine Stachowiak
District manager Orion Sanders spoke about the Kern River Valley Cemetery District on Thursday August 15, to the Exchange Club, at a Paradise Cove Lodge luncheon.
Sanders said, “As everybody probably knows recently we had a big change over at our cemetery district. And we have a whole new staff and we’re working towards solving a lot of different issues. And we’re moving forward and trying to build on the legacy that was left to us. And so there’s a lot of things in the works.”
The district’s primary goal was to meet the grand jury reports recommendations. Sanders said, “About 90% of those (recommendations) are complete, as of now.”
New staffing at the district includes a secretary handling paperwork with customers, another administrator working on bills and accounts receivable. Manager staff and office staff is dialed back in favor of hiring a grounds keeper. The groundskeeper works 32 hours weekly.
The district has well and water issues. The well needs a full acid wash in the system. It is adequate to water the entire system once maintenance is finished. It has been clogged with iron algae and the valve system has been about two-thirds automatic on the property. Personnel have been working on making sure the system is working properly.
The cemetery only missed one funeral or burial, in the process of its changeover, according to Sanders. However the district was able to do the service a bit later.
The district will be going to a new software system making it more interactive and better enabling visitors from the public to find where loved ones are buried. The district is researching files to make sure some unknown graves without tombstones are identified and placed into a digital filing system. Everything is currently being marked on a spreadsheet and will be brought into the 21st century, according to Sanders.
The staff is revamping the website, rebuilding it and customizing it. They may be putting a fence around the south part of the cemetery without signage. They will be identifying and mapping what graves are whose. Sections will be marked and a map will map out sections for visitors to make it more customers friendly.
The groundskeeper is currently repairing sprinklers valves and water breaks, which in some cases requires digging, doing tree trimming, raking, working on greening the grass.
“I met with FEMA last week,” said Sanders. “They have to come out and do a geotech report. That will happen within the next couple of weeks. We will have that report in our hands. Once that report is there they will try to work the money that we’re getting from FEMA to have that barrier built. I don’t think it’s technically called a wall, at the old cemetery, where it has been slowly kind of sinking down towards the river, especially when we’ve had high water for two years. The water has been soaking up underneath the Old Cemetery. This has probably happened dozens of times over the 104 years. So there has been two different reports: there was an electronic scan of the property; and there was also a cadaver dog that came out. We have both of those reports. Apparently there are a few bodies that were actually slid out underneath the fence. So my question to the engineer was whether it was a wall they would have to dig down into the bedrock and bury in.”
The engineer assured Sanders that it was more of a concrete barrier, kind of on the slope of the hill, that is going to go all the way around and keep the water hopefully from soaking up underneath. They will test how far the water has been seeping underneath first and what the water has done.
