Aquamation, said plainly

For families · US · Last reviewed Aug 31, 2026

Aquamation is cremation done with water and an alkaline solution instead of fire. Flame cremation is the one most families already know, and it’s the reference point for this one.

Whether a method is legal where you live is the question the internet gets wrong most often. The answers on this page were read from the statutes and administrative rules of all fifty states and the District of Columbia in a review this site completed on 2026-08-20.

What each process actually is

Flame cremation. The body is placed in a chamber and exposed to direct flame and high heat. What’s left is bone fragment, which is then processed into the coarse gray material families call ashes. Nothing about it is gentle. It’s a heat process, it works, and it’s what most of the country uses.

Aquamation. You’ll also see it called alkaline hydrolysis, water cremation, or resomation. The body is placed in a sealed steel vessel with water and a strong alkaline solution, usually potassium hydroxide, and held at temperature and pressure until the soft tissue dissolves into a sterile liquid. What doesn’t dissolve is bone. The liquid goes to the wastewater system the way other regulated facility effluent does. The bone is dried and processed, the same as after flame cremation.

The chemistry is the same reaction that happens to a buried body over years. The vessel just runs it in hours.

What comes back to the family

After flame cremation you get processed bone in an urn or a temporary container. You already know roughly how much that is, because it’s the thing you’ve seen on a shelf.

After aquamation you get processed bone too, in a container of the same kind. Providers describe the material as differing from flame cremation in color and in volume. This site has no sourced measurement of either, so it won’t print one. Ask the provider what to expect and what container it comes in.

What it costs

Flame cremation is the reference. Aquamation usually prices near it, sometimes a little above, because the equipment is expensive and there are far fewer vessels in the country to spread that cost across.

Prices vary widely by provider and by region, and the spread between two homes in the same city is frequently larger than the spread between two methods. This site shows real posted prices from providers’ own price lists where they exist, with the date and a link to the source document. Use those. A range in an article isn’t a price.

One thing holds across both: the disposition itself is only part of the bill. The basic services fee, transport, and any service you hold are separate lines on the price list, and they don’t change much based on which method you pick.

Where aquamation is legal: 26 states

Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Legal doesn’t always mean available. Kansas and Wyoming authorize it and this review found no provider operating in either one. Idaho and Maine allow it by administrative rule while their statutes stay silent, and Missouri allows it by board regulation the same way. Those three are genuinely legal, but a rule can be withdrawn without a legislative vote, which is a thinner footing than a statute.

Two states license it as its own disposition method rather than as a kind of cremation: North Carolina and Tennessee. That matters when you’re reading a price list, because in those states aquamation may sit on its own line under its own rules and the cremation section won’t cover it.

Arkansas is ambiguous. The state board’s own rule names alkaline hydrolysis inside its reduction definition, but the same rule defines a crematory around a retort and there’s no licensing path for a hydrolysis vessel. A 2025 bill that would have built one went to interim study instead of becoming law. So the method is named in Arkansas law and no Arkansas provider can lawfully perform it. If you’re in Arkansas, call the state board before you plan around it.

New Hampshire is the only state that banned it in words, at RSA 325-A:30 II, enacted in 2008 after a short period when it was legal. Everywhere else that lacks aquamation lacks it because the statute lists the permitted methods and this one isn’t on the list. Almost no state banned aquamation. Most simply never authorized it.

Alaska couldn’t be resolved. Alaska has no statutory list of disposition methods at all, and the answer lives in regulations this review could not reach. If you’re in Alaska, ask the state directly. This page will carry an answer when there’s a sourced one.

The District of Columbia names resomation in its code, but only in the medical examiner context and with no facility licensing scheme behind it. For a family arranging a funeral, the practical answer in the District is that it isn’t available.

Texas allows neither

Texas defines cremation at Tex. Health & Safety Code 716.001 as reducing remains “through direct flame, extreme heat, and evaporation.” Aquamation uses none of those three, and neither does terramation. The Texas disposition list is closed, so both fall outside it. Bills to change that have failed repeatedly, most recently in 2025, and Texas holds regular sessions in odd years, so nothing can change before 2027 without a special session.

Nineteen states allow neither method

Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Delaware and New Jersey allow terramation but not aquamation, and so does New York. The two methods travel together in news coverage and separately in law. Don’t let one imply the other. Terramation is a different process under different statutes, and it has its own page: Terramation, said plainly.

Things you’ll read that aren’t true

Several widely repeated claims about these laws are wrong. Each of these was checked against the primary text.

Virginia did not authorize aquamation in 2022. The 2022 act was an uncodified study, not an authorization. A real bill in 2024 passed the House and was then defeated in the Senate 6 to 32. Virginia’s code still defines cremation in terms of fire and a furnace. This one is in wide circulation, including on funeral trade pages, partly because Virginia’s legislative site displays proposed bill text in the same formatting as enacted code.

Kentucky did not legalize aquamation in June 2021. That claim traces back to committee testimony, not to an enactment. Kentucky reopened the relevant statute in 2022 and kept the combustion definition.

There’s no Michigan SB 471 legalizing aquamation. That citation is fabricated, and it was checked against Michigan’s own legislature site. Michigan allows neither method.

Oklahoma’s aquamation authority isn’t SB 559 of 2025. That was a merchandise bill. The real authority is HB 1742 of 2021, effective 2021-11-01.

Arizona probably did not authorize aquamation in 2019. The status isn’t in doubt, it’s legal there now, but all 339 chapters of the 2019 session laws were scanned and nothing was found. The commonly repeated year is unsupported.

Louisiana never passed a 2022 aquamation act. No such act exists.

North Dakota is a live disagreement. Several published maps list North Dakota as an aquamation state. Reading the enumerated disposition list across six chapters of the code doesn’t support that, so this site records North Dakota as not authorized on the primary text and tells you plainly that the trackers disagree. If you’re in North Dakota, that disagreement is a reason to call the state board rather than to trust either map.

If a home in your state offers aquamation and your state doesn’t allow it

This happens, and it isn’t necessarily a trick. A funeral home in a state where aquamation isn’t legal can still arrange it by shipping your person to a state where it is lawful, having it done there, and receiving the remains back. That’s a real service and a real arrangement.

It’s also not a local disposition, and you should price it as what it is: transport plus an out-of-state disposition, arranged by your local home. Ask three questions.

Where does the process actually happen, and does the price you were quoted include the transport both ways? Most quoted figures leave transport out, and transport is frequently the larger part of the total.

How long does the round trip add? You’re waiting on shipping schedules in both directions, not just on the process itself.

Who is the licensed provider doing the work, and can you see their price list? You’re buying from two businesses. You’re entitled to know both.

If a price list in a state where the method isn’t legal shows aquamation as a plain line item with no explanation, that’s worth asking about directly. It doesn’t mean anyone is lying to you. It usually means the line is a forwarding arrangement and the list never said so.

Where this comes from

Every legality statement on this page rests on a statute, an administrative rule, or an enacted bill, read in a fifty-one jurisdiction review this site completed on 2026-08-20. Where the review relied on a secondary source, or could not verify something at all, it says so by name. Alaska is the one state with no answer.

Laws in this area change most years. This page carries its review date at the top for that reason. If your state isn’t where you expected to find it, check with your state funeral board before you plan around what you read anywhere, including here.

Sources

1. Tex. Health & Safety Code 716.001 Texas defines cremation as reduction through direct flame, extreme heat, and evaporation, which is why aquamation does not fit
2. N.H. RSA 325-A:30 II New Hampshire, the only state that banned alkaline hydrolysis in words
3. RCW 68.04.290 and RCW 68.04.310 Washington's statutory definitions of alkaline hydrolysis and natural organic reduction, the first such authorization in the country
4. Okla. HB 1742 (2021) The real authority for Oklahoma alkaline hydrolysis, effective 2021-11-01, not the 2025 merchandise bill often cited for it