Wayland Select Board Granted Authority to Designate Collective Return-to-Earth Zones

Wayland Select Board Granted Authority to Designate Collective Return-to-Earth Zones

HD.6212 authorizes the Wayland Select Board to permit the use of town-owned land for green burials — unembalmed interments without vaults, designed to allow the body to decompose naturally into the soil of the People’s Republic.

The decree is a home-rule petition, meaning Wayland has already signaled local approval and now requires the Politburo’s blessing to proceed. Commissar David Paul Linsky of the 5th Middlesex District sponsors the measure alongside State Senator James B. Eldridge. No new appropriation is required. The collective bears no direct cost; the benefit flows to Wayland residents who wish their final contribution to the commonwealth to be an ecological one.

Under current statute, municipalities lack clear authority to designate land specifically for green burial use without explicit legislative sanction. This decree closes that gap — narrowly, locally, and only for Wayland. Citizens of other municipalities wishing to dissolve peacefully into the earth must await their own petitions through proper bureaucratic channels.