Just off the shores of City Island and Orchard Beach is Hart Island, the world’s largest publicly funded cemetery and the final resting place for the poorest of the poor or simply, the forgotten and unclaimed.
It is perhaps the darkest and most depressing place in all of New York City with over 1 million such people interred here without even the dignity of a solitary grave but stacked upon each other in unmarked pits except numbers to identify who “might” be buried there.
Now, CBS News reports that according to The Hart Island Project, human bones are washing up on City Island and Orchard Beach due to the lack of upkeep on the island particularly after Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012 exposing bodies and damaging the sea wall.
Even after receiving a grant of $13 million in 2013 from FEMA, there are no plans to even begin repair work until 2020 says TimeOut New York and this is absolutely appalling that it would take this long to give some dignity to the dearly departed.
We really need to do better, people.
Meanwhile, bathers in Orchard Beach might be sharing the water with the dead and not even knowing it.
