§ 18-15-302 - Municipal corporations -- Power to condemn -- Compensation for condemnation -- Taking cemetery land. - Arkansas Statutes

18-15-302. Municipal corporations -- Power to condemn -- Compensation for condemnation -- Taking cemetery land.

(a) There shall be included in the award of compensation and damages for taking land occupied by a cemetery the reasonable cost of a new site of at least equal size. The new site shall be approved by the State Board of Health and also by the circuit court in which the condemnation proceedings are instituted.

(b) (1) The order and judgment condemning a cemetery shall require the municipality, at its own expense, to remove all bodies, tombstones, and markers from the site of the original cemetery, to reinter the bodies in the new site, and to properly reset the tombstones and markers in the new site.

(2) The court may require the municipality to deposit into the registry of the court a sum found by the court to be sufficient to ensure the performance of the obligation by the municipality.

(3) Nothing contained in this section shall prevent a surviving spouse or next of kin of a person buried in the cemetery from removing the body to another cemetery selected by him or her, the municipality paying the reasonable cost thereof, provided that the cost under this section, if demanded by the next of kin, shall not be less than the amount paid by the municipality for the same service when bodies are removed to a cemetery selected by the municipality.

(c) If any power, oil, gas, or any other public utility facilities shall be flooded by such an impounding lake, the lines may be likewise condemned, and the award of compensation and damages shall include the reasonable cost of relocating the power, oil, gas, or other public utility facility.

(d) If any portion of any county road will be flooded by an impounding lake, the municipality shall pay to the county the cost of relocating that portion of road.