2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE TWENTY-THREE - Public Planning and Development (§§ 1 — 11273) › PART I - Public Planning (§§ 1 — 229ccc) › Chapter 1 - Miscellaneous Provisions (§§ 1 — 61a) › § 61a - Location of cremation facilities

(a) It is hereby declared as public policy of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico that facilities for the cremation of corpses or that use any other thermal method for the disposal thereof shall be exclusively located in areas that are zoned as industrial and in unzoned areas, in accordance with the regulations to be set forth or tempered to such purpose by the Planning Board or by the autonomous municipalities that have approved the Territorial Ordinance Plan, as the case may be. It is also provided that in the regulations to be adopted the operation of such facilities shall not be authorized if the same is less than fifty meters from a residential zone. The organized transition of the existing facilities for compliance with this section is also provided, and it is established that the facilities existing in areas whose zoning is other than those mentioned herein must have the endorsement of the municipality in which the same is located.
(b) The Planning Board, the Permit Management Office or the Permits Office of the Autonomous Municipality, as the case may be, shall review all applications for construction, remodeling or extension of furnace or crematorium of corpses facilities that have not been approved by the effective date of this act in order to notify them of this public policy. Being it understood by this that no type of permit shall be approved that allows for their operation in areas under any type of category other than industrial or unzoned areas that comply with the provisions and the endorsement of the Environmental Quality Board. In unzoned areas, the endorsement of the municipality in which the crematory is to be located shall be required.
(c) Those operations that use any method for the thermal disposal of corpses and at the time of the approval of this act have permits in effect for their operation and are not located in industrial or unzones areas, as provided in this section, shall have a grace period of six (6) months to obtain the endorsement of the municipality in which they are located, if at the time of the approval of this act they do not have the same. In the case that such municipality has established a Territorial Ordinance Plan that provides for these particulars, its determination shall be attuned to what it stipulated and provided for said matter therein. Those that comply with the requirement of the municipal endorsement may continue with their operations, but shall not extend their facilities unless said extension is attuned to the provisions of this section. The cremation operations that do not comply with the endorsement of the municipality, or that if the municipality has a Territorial Ordinance Plan, it does not provide for such respect, said operations shall be relocated within the term provided by the municipality which shall never be greater than two (2) years. [The Regulations and Permits Administration of the Permits Office of the Autonomous Municipality is empowered and directed, as it corresponds, to act in furtherance of this provision.]
[(d)] The Permit Management Office, the Industrial Development Company, and the Permits Office of the Autonomous Municipality are hereby directed to collaborate with any crematory or enterprise engaged in the thermal disposition of corpses that is operating at present outside of industrial zones in order to expedite their relocation to these zones within the grace period provided and as may be feasible, within the operation that are being developed in the corresponding industrial parks.
History —Feb. 1, 2006, No. 55, § 1—3.