The Town of Okotoks is planning for the future with a cemetery expansion.

Currently the Town has two plans, one being an expansion of the cremation garden and the second is to acquire more land.

Christa Michailuck, parks manager for the Town of Okotoks, says the current cemetery has a limited lifespan left depending on choice of interment.

"Right now our cemetery, I believe the limiting factor is about 30 years once we've completed our build out of additional cremation interments in 2017. We have about 30 years left of in-ground, traditional 4x8 burial plots."

With Okotoks being a sustainable community and wanting to keep heading in that direction, Michailuck says they don't want to keep consuming more land with growth and want to look at alternative practices such as green burial and others in the new cemetery that would help extend the life of those existing lands.

A green burial involves a 4x8 sized plot where no embalming is involved and the casket is simple and easy to decompose. On the surface of the plot instead of a concrete ribbon or memorial marker there would be trees and shrubs or a low maintenance ground cover that has a low environmental impact in terms of long term maintenance and what goes in the ground.

Michailuck says it's recommended additional land is found sooner rather than later.

"It takes time to develop those lands and also our desire would be to have them in closer proximity to the existing cemetery than on the other side of town so because annexation is coming and these types of things, to acquire that land now before it's developed into other things would be the recommended approach."

With the current population and death rate there's about 2-3 services a week in the cemetery, which according to Michailuck will change over decades as the population continues to grow.