A proposed research facility of corpses at Carson-Newman University in eastern Tennessee has been put on ice.

­­Lack of funding foiled the university's plan to build a cadaver research center, or body farm, on a New Market hilltop in rural Jefferson County, university officials told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

"For right now it is off the table," said Kina Mallard, Carson-Newman's executive vice president and provost. "They don't have the money to move forward."

The body farm, proposed nearly a year ago, would have helped anchor a graduate-study program in forensic science through its body farm.

Art Bohanan, a retired finger print specialist for the Knoxville Police Department, planned to donate the site to the university in an effort to give Carson-Newman students a place where they can observe how human bodies and animal carcasses decompose over time and what that decomposition does to the air, soil and water.

The site would have consisted of only one "disease-free" cadaver or carcass at a time protected by a double ring of fence and covered by chicken wire to keep out scavenger hunters.

Although there are four cadaver research centers that exist worldwide, including the University of Tennessee facility off Alcoa Highway in Knoxville, none study the environmental effects of body decomposition, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Bohanan and other supporters had hoped Jefferson County would be the first.

He has already put about $10,000 into paving a parking lot and erecting fences for the area, which would have covered slightly more than 8 acres, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

"Were at a standstill right now," Bohanan said. "Nothing's really going on. We're disappointed it's not going to move forward, but we'll stay intact and see what develops.

The plan won the approval of the Jefferson County Board of Zoning Appeals and triggered a lawsuit filed by Doris Ligon, a neighboring landowner who said she worried about contamination of her well and the safety of her cattle and horses. The lawsuit is pending.

Mallard said she don't anticipate the university a body farm anytime soon.

"Like a lot of dreams sometimes, this one has to be put aside," she said.

Bohanan said there is a need for the body farm because it would help a lot of people.