An update to a story we brought you on Friday.
Elkhart Mayor Dick Moore has ordered Grace Lawn Cemetery to close, Sunday.
We told you about the erosion happening on the cemetery property.
Moore says the erosion is due to low river levels and little rainfall.
He says closing the cemetery will protect people who are walking around the area and will also preserve the cemetery.
Moore adds the city's emergency management team will be on watch until further notice.
Anyone wishing to visit a grave site can call the cemetery for arrangements.
Moore says construction to stabilize the riverbank will begin soon.
Original story from July 13:
There's a problem behind the gates of the historic Grace Lawn Cemetery on Middlebury Street in Elkhart.
It's a problem Kelly Anderson saw first hand when she was fishing. "It comes all the way down," she says referring to the erosion along the river.
She was alarmed to see how bad it has gotten, so she talked with the groundskeeper, the police and with FOX 28 to make sure the issue is being addressed. "It really irritated me," she says.
Grace Lawn was dedicated in the 1800's. Many of the city's founders are buried there, and so are an estimated 100 Civil War soldiers. You can see how close the gravestones are to the edge. So we went to city leaders, who assure us they've been working on a solution.
"It's important because it's sacred ground," says Executive Assistant to the Mayor Arvis Dawson. "It's where ancestors, people's families lay. We want to make sure their internment is secure." Dawson says Public Works' engineers just came up with a design plan. They'll open it up for bids, and a company will step in and get to work.
What they'll do then is two-fold. First they'll clear brush from along the river, then they'll put in about 350 square yards of what's called riprap. The goal is to prevent future erosion. "We want to make sure that we stabilize it going forward," Dawson says.
Kelly Anderson says that is a step in the right direction. "It makes me feel really well, because I was about to tell them that I was going to take a sack of dirt out there myself," she says.
