Sleepy Hollow Cemetery’s possible annexation of a 12.5-acre parcel of adjacent land, which its board says it needs to survive, has ignited worries among nearby residents who claim expanding the cemetery would further contaminate surrounding environs, destroy crucial woodlands and rob the village of much-needed tax revenue.

Members of the Sleepy Hollow Manor Association and other village residents told the Sleepy Hollow Planning Board annexing the parcel would be as negligent and illegal as its rezoning from residential to cemetery use, which occurred last summer without the Environmental Impact Statement required under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). They urged the board at last month’s public hearing to deny a request to subdivide the land, in the hope of halting its pending sale from the estate of Laurence Rockefeller to the cemetery for potential development.

“We ask this process be stopped here and not be allowed to continue until the entire, open, SEQRA process is done,” said Arthur McKinley, a member of the Sleepy Hollow Manor Association Board of Directors.

Village Architect and Building Inspector Sean McCarthy said the village did follow SEQRA in rezoning the land, subjecting it to an environmental review, a public hearing, and approvals from the Planning Board and the Waterfront Advisory Committee. The reviews culminated in the board’s conclusion that rezoning posed no environmental impact and issuing a “negative declaration,” which eliminated the need for an environmental impact statement, McCarthy said.

Planning Board member George Tanner rejected the community’s insistence that it consider the legality of the site’s rezoning, noting the Village Board of Trustees made the original decision.

“This is a cemetery zone. Whether or not this is legal is not a decision we can make,” Tanner said.

Village Attorney Nicholas M. Ward-Willis said, “It is not the role of the Planning Board to look back at what the Board of Trustees did or did not do.”

Still, community members, like Charles Lankester, were adamant, remarking, “You have inherited a problem.”

Residents want to block the subdivision and, ultimately, the development of the parcel, located just north of the existing cemetery, for many reasons. They are worried developing the site would require removing acres of “virgin forest” and undergrowth that absorb stormwater runoff, offer some privacy to the houses that abut Route 9 while buffering sounds of traffic, and lend beauty to the area. They also fear adding more graves to the 90-acre, 150-year-old cemetery would contaminate soil and, ultimately, groundwater, which, they say, already contains dangerous, albeit untested, levels of formaldehyde and other toxic, potentially-carcinogenic embalming solutions.

“The amount of stuff already in the ground is huge,” McKinley said. “If it was your backyard they’d declare it a Superfund site.”

Residents also resent the prospect of the land passing from taxable to tax-exempt status.

“This is not good for our village, for our school district, or for our own housing values,” McKinley said.

In addition, opponents maintained the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which already has approximately 40,000 graves – almost five times the number of residents in the village – is big enough.

“Most of the…bodies up there are in gradual states of deterioration,” McKinley said. “It’s a bad use of the land…to cut down a forest (and) make a cemetery that’s already too big bigger. We’re turning our village into a necropolis, a village of the dead. We’re becoming another Valhalla.”

Len Andrew, a member of the cemetery board and a Sleepy Hollow Manor resident, called comparing the cemetery, a historic landmark, to a toxic dump, “offensive.”

“To cast it off as a toxic dump is just outrageous,” he remarked.

Andrew said the cemetery has little vacant land available and requires lot sales to meet the costs of maintaining and improving its grounds, trees, and roads.

“Income from our endowment is insufficient for us to maintain the cemetery,” he said. “There is an awful lot of work needed that we just can’t afford to do,” he said, noting the decrease in workers from 30 to seven. “Land sales are essential.”

Andrew said most of the land in question cannot be developed, due to steep slopes, rock outcroppings, wetlands, and wetland buffer areas. “The area which can be developed is vital to the continued maintenance and improvement of this important community resource,” he said. Besides, Andrew said, there are currently no plans to develop the property, which is another reason why going through SEQRA was not necessary.

Residents were not appeased. Subdividing property, they insisted, is just the first, irreversible step in the development process. If no development plans exist, they demanded, then why is the estate of Laurence Rockefeller, which currently owns the land, seeking to subdivide it?

According to John C. Schnaufer, an attorney for the Rockefeller estate, the subdivision would allow the estate to buy back two acres to add to the already-existing two-acre family cemetery. When reminded that current state law limits private cemeteries to two acres, Schnaufer said the estate wanted to subdivide the land in case the law changed.

Even if the land is subdivided, development still depends on numerous environmental reviews, McCarthy said.

“The process has not ended. Subdivision approval, site plan approval, and a wetlands permit are still required, each requiring public notice and detailed analysis regarding the environmental impacts of any proposed development on the property,” he said.

Tanner, who has continued the public hearing to later this month, assured residents their arguments were still in play.

“Site plan is when the public and the board can hold the applicant’s feet to the fire,” he said.

At this point, residents seem as, if not more, determined to overturn the decision that turned the property into a cemetery zone in the first place.

“They broke the law,” McKinley said of the Board of Trustees’ vote to rezone the land. “We’re going to have to sue the village.”