A Manchester funeral home director is looking to open a new business in Concord using a technology that's billed as an eco-friendly alternative to traditional cremation and employs a water-based process instead of fire. It would be the first facility of its kind in New Hampshire and one of just a few nationwide.

The process, called resomation, involves dissolving the body by using water and alkali in a hot, pressurized steel chamber. In the United States, the process has primarily been used in medical institutions. Chad Corbin, owner of Goodwin Funeral Home in Manchester, plans to open in one unit of a new 12-unit commercial condominium building at 27 Industrial Park Drive.

It took the planning board three votes on Wednesday before approving the proposal for Corbin's business, called New England Resolution. The plan passed, 5-3, with conditions. Corbin asked the Monitor to fax him questions last week and then didn't respond or return messages left at the funeral home.

According to the website of a Glasgow company that markets resomation, the process is similar to the natural decomposition of a body that is buried or to the breakdown of food in a person's stomach, except that it is sped up by using stronger alkali, usually potassium hydroxide, and a pressurized chamber.

When the process is complete, which takes several hours, the remains consist of a white ash of calcium phosphate and an "innocuous liquid of the building blocks of life containing amino acids, peptides, sugar and mild soap," the websites says. The ash is returned to the family, and the liquid would be neutralized and disposed of in the city sewer, City Planner Doug Woodward said.

The process is said to be more ecological because it avoids carbon dioxide and mercury emissions that can occur during cremation.

The planning board approved the plan on the grounds that the unit be wired so that a generator could be used if the power were to quit and that Corbin set up an emergency notification system to alert him if a problem occurs while he's not there.

"The board talked about the fact that others who have done this were institutions; therefore, there was someone on the premises 24/7 and there was backup power," Woodward said.

Tracy Taylor, who spoke at a planning board hearing earlier this month, and her boyfriend Adam Fleury were considering buying one of the condo units in the new complex to move their business, ADF Flooring, from Boscawen to Concord. Taylor said they decided not to because of Corbin's plan.

"We pulled out due to the fact that they're even going to allow this to happen," she said.

Taylor said she worried about whether there would be odors involved and the sewer system backing up into other units. She also was concerned that a hearse would be parked in the parking lot while staff and customers were coming and going.

Woodward said the board had questioned why Corbin didn't use the technology in his Manchester funeral home and was told that he didn't have the appropriate electrical hookups.

The approval also requires that Corbin receive a license for the facility from the state Board of Registration of Funeral Home Directors and Embalmers.

Chairman Daniel Healy said the board had not received an application from Corbin, although Corbin has presented the board with information about the technology. Healy said the process is "very different from your traditional crematory," which by definition involves fire.

The state last year instituted stricter laws for cremation after the February 2005 raid of a Seabrook facility that found unmarked ashes, a corpse in a broken refrigerator and piles of medical waste, among other infractions.

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