In the decade since the Hageys launched Rest Assured Pet Cremation, they’ve been shunned by neighbors, rejected by planning commissions and, most recently, dunned by the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency after smoke and odor complaints.
At the same time, the Hageys are a major supplier of pet disposal in Lane and surrounding counties.
They take carcasses from almost all local veterinarians, Lane County Animal Services, Greenhill Humane Society, Linn County Animal Control and Heartland Humane Society — in addition to providing private pet cremations, David Hagey said.
One of the company’s two incinerators can handle 700 pounds in a communal cremation, and that can be repeated multiple times a day.
“That’s a touchy subject. Yes, we’re big, but I don’t want people to think we’re so big we’re not taking care of their animal,” David Hagey said. “We do a lot, but we still do it right.”
The Hageys’ saga of strife began in mid-1999 when the couple sought a home occupation permit to build a crematorium on a 12-acre family property in the rural Mohawk Valley.
The neighbors fought the proposal for years, saying the crematory would bother them with noise, odor and smoke.
“This is not a home business that belongs in a residential area,” a neighbor told a reporter at the time.
After four years and multiple hearings before multiple commissions and hearings officials in Lane County and Springfield, the Hageys got permission to locate in a warehouse in an industrial district on Olympic Street in Springfield.
Emissions weren’t supposed to be a problem, Laura Hagey told a reporter at the time. “You’ll only see heat shimmers.”
The Hageys hung out a shingle, installed two propane-fired cremation units and a walk-in refrigerator and began doing business.
The company charged up to $170 for a private pet cremation, which returned ashes to the pet owners, and up to $90 for communal cremation.
Cremation takes about two hours for an average-sized pet, and the remains (mainly bone pieces) are swept out, cooled and put through an electric processor to reduce fragments and make them a uniform size.
Most of the time — 99 percent — the incinerators functioned, the exhaust was clear and the neighbors were unbothered by the crematory, David Hagey said.
Springfield German Import Service, Cramer’s Grinding and Tooling and United Parcel Service were in the same long warehouse building or across a parking lot.
“Every once in a while you have a problem,” David Hagey said. “It’s not something that happens on a regular basis, but if something goes wrong — and a machine malfunctions or something like that — everybody knows about it when you’re in that kind of a close proximity.”
The smoke bothered employees at the United Parcel Service, operations supervisor Beth Mottweiler said.
“It was pretty miserable,” Mottweiler said. “The smoke, like, came into the building for a little while.
“The guy who owned it was nice, but ...”
A manager at Cramer’s Grinding and Tooling said the smoke wasn’t an everyday occurrence.
“If you’re burning dead animals or people, there’s bound to be smells,” said the manager, who declined to be identified. “A few times the wind blew in our direction and it smelled bad. “You can’t even describe how it smelled.
“It just smelled bad.”
In June 2011, a complaint about a “foul odor all day” spurred an investigation by the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency.
The LRAPA investigator “observed that the visible emissions were resulting in the odor of incomplete combustion of animal remains.”
Upon investigation, the inspector and the company found that the crematory was smoking during its preheat phase, when it was empty.
“You don’t think, 'Oh I have to watch the unit during preheat’ when there’s nothing in it. When there’s nothing in it, you think the preheating is going along fine,” Hagey said.
Burn-off of residue from previous use was causing the smoke, the LRAPA inspector found.
The Hageys paid a $3,000 fine.
“LRAPA was just doing their job, the way I look at it,” Hagey said. “We were in violation. It was something happening when we weren’t aware of it.
“We had the manufacturer come out and make the necessary adjustments to the unit, and we haven’t had any problems since,” he said.
But the Hageys already had decided to move to property they bought for $430,000 in August 2010 along Highway 99 north of Airport Road.
The couple bought the old trucking company warehouse building after their landlord on Olympic Street sold the whole building to United Parcel Services.
The Hageys were afraid their days at that location were numbered.
“All we had was a month-to-month (lease),” Hagey said.
Moving the two crematory units, one by one, over the past two months has been time-consuming and expensive, Hagey said. He let the decision to get a $2,500 LRAPA air contaminant discharge permit for the new location slide for a couple weeks, he said.
“You’re paying the electrician, you’re paying the gas installer and the gas company,” Hagey said. “The technician is coming in from Florida. Yeah, there was a lot of out-go all at one time
“Did I hope that they wouldn’t notice (the move) for a couple of days until I got some more money in? Yeah.”
But in October, LRAPA discovered the Hageys had moved the crematory without the permit and issued a second citation this year.
The company, Hagey said, had to keep operating throughout the move to Eugene.
A lot of animals die beginning at the first cold snap each year until mid-January, when ailing pets are put to rest after the holidays, he said.
“We can’t afford to be down, especially this time of year, which is our busiest time of year,” he said.
“It’s not something that happens on a regular basis, but if something goes wrong — and a machine malfunctions or something like that — everybody knows about it when you’re in that kind of a close proximity.”
SOURCE: http://www.registerguard.com/web/newslocalnews/27216359-41/hagey-pet-hageys-cremation-crematory.html.csp
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